What Was Katie Zacharia’s Husband Doing With North Korea?

The former White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, believes President Trump should not go to communist China next week in protest of the dictatorship’s spying activities, but questions linger from her brief tenure behind the podium about her husband’s business dealings with North Korea.Tyler Zacharia lived in Beijing for eight years while he was serving as vice president of the global emerging markets private equity firm Schulze Global Investments. His official biography with his current employer states he helped to “expand the business” and “build teams” in North Korea.North Korean business is largely off limits to Americans due to a patchwork of economic sanctions but the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control can issue exemptions or licenses on a case-by-case basis. Forbes says Schulze Global Investments consulted with sanctions lawyers in America and filed notices with the U.S. Treasury Department before doing business with Pyongyang.North Korea’s close ally China will be hosting next week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings at the city of Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong, where Mr. Trump is expected to hold side meetings with the host president, Xi Jinping, and possibly President Vladimir Putin of Russia. On social media Thursday, Ms. Zacharia reacted to the resignation of Jensen Huang from his role as CEO of Nvidia in the fallout from his affair with Alice Huang, who is suspected of serving as a Chinese spy.“After bad faith actions by the [Chinese Communist Party] to thwart the brilliant Jensen Huang, the United States should not go to China next week,” Ms. Zacharia wrote on social media. “The Democrats would love nothing more than for China to gain ground in the super-intelligence race.”But it was not long ago that her own husband says he was pursuing ventures with a communist nation openly hostile to the United States. He joined Schulze Global Investments in 2007, one year before the firm approved loans to three North Korean mining companies. The loans were valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece.Katie and Tyler Zacharia were married in May 2011 — about two months before Ms. Zacharia now infamously failed California’s bar exam. Ms. Zacharia has said her failed bar exam was “inconsequential” because at the time she was preparing to leave the country to live in China with her husband. She did not attempt to take the bar again.It was right around that time that Gabriel Schulze, the founder of Schulze Global Investments, began pursuing a mega-deal — to bring Coca-Cola to North Korea. He was so confident the plan would work that he allowed a reporter for Forbes magazine to tag along.The opening from the North Koreans came as the rogue regime, which is heavily sanctioned because of its nuclear weapons and missile programs, enacted a 10-year plan aimed at boosting its GDP 30-fold to $1 trillion by 2020.“We understand that there’s a high likelihood that there could be all sorts of trouble and that we could end up losing money,” Mr. Schulze told Forbes. “There’s a lot of [U.S.-North Korea] mistrust, there’s a lot of gamesmanship, and for us it’s not about pretending that that’s not there. We’re not in a little bubble of happiness.”Coca-Cola ultimately proved jittery about investing in North Korea, amid questions over whether the move would even be legal under American sanctions laws. It is unclear whether Mr. Zacharia was directly involved with either the mining loans or the aborted Coca-Cola overture apart from the reference in his official biography.After the North Korean team-building, Mr. Zacharia left Schulze Global in 2013 to mostly focus on the film business. He and his family moved back to Los Angeles, where he became an executive producer on the Martin Scorcese-directed films “Silence” and “The Irishman.”He was a producer on the film “The Brink of War,” released this past summer, about negotiations over nuclear weapons between President Reagan and the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev. He was also an executive producer on the film “Young Washington,” released on July 4, that chronicles the formative years of America’s first president.Schulze Global was purchased by Cerberus Capital Management in 2018. The founder of that firm is Steve Feinberg, now deputy secretary of defense in the second Trump term since 2025. Filings show Mr. Feinberg divested from the firm before taking up his Pentagon position, yet also retains a financial relationship with Cerberus.

What Was Katie Zacharia’s Husband Doing With North Korea?

What Was Katie Zacharia’s Husband Doing With North Korea?

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