Update: The Trump Organization has approached The Observer regarding the story, denying that Trump’s legal team were trying to shut down the site.
Alan Garten, executive vice president and chief legal officer at The Trump Organization, said: “This is completely false. No such letter was ever sent by us.”
Some people on Twitter have pointed out that the story might have been a clever marketing trick to attract people to a site. In addition, the site trumpscratch.com which Lucy told the Observer she created, appears to have been registered on the day of publication.
A couple of of publications that have picked up the story has issued notes about the story. The Hollywood Reporter claims to have “significant doubts about the authenticity of the cease-and-desist letter that was initially provided”. Gizmodo, who also picked up the story, wrote a separate article saying that the story is most likely to be a trolling effort to promote the site.
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Will it go all the way to the Supreme Court?
President Trump has tax reform, heath care, the border wall, and a host of other complex issues on his plate. But that’s not stopping his legal team from becoming allegedly embroiled in a battle to shut down a website that lets people scratch the President with kitten paws. The site is run by a 17-year-old.
According to Lucy, the teenager behind kittenfeed.com, she received a cease-and-desist letter from the President’s legal team.
The website was launched back in February, more than a month into Trump’s presidency, and garnered just about 1,200 visitors in its first few weeks. But despite being a tiny unknown website, Trump lawyers came after the San Francisco-based teen.
Lucy told The Hollywood Reporter that she developed the site for fun as she was applying for web developer jobs. The original site domain used to be trumpscratch.com, but she was forced to change it following the cease-and-desist letter received on March 1 from The Trump Organization. According to the letter, her site infringed on the “internationally known and famous” Trump trademark.
But even after the domain change, she says Trump’s legal team continued waging a legal battle against her and shortly sent another letter because her site linked to an anti-Trump shirt sale on Amazon. The site’s owner removed the link and hasn’t received any more letters from the President’s legal team.
“I really just want people to be aware that this is a president who’s clearly more concerned about what people think of him than doing things of substance,” she said.
“The fact that as president he still has teams going around bothering to shut down silly sites like mine is outrageous,” Lucy continued. “Literally all my site is is punching him with kitten paws. A president should not have the time or care to hire people to shut sites like mine down. He should be running the country, not tweeting about TV ratings or anything else like that.”
The website’s creator upgraded the site by allowing people to make visible scratches on Trump’s face and added text that reads: “Trump seems tough at first, but he gets weaker with every scratch.”
Interestingly, at the time of writing, the site appears to be no longer working. A previous live version of the site can be found here.