A 17-year-old girl reportedly got a cease and desist letter from President Donald Trump's lawyers. They were allegedly asking her to take down a website she created that had cats punching Trump.
Lucy from San Francisco coded the site Kitten Feed and launched this in February under a different title bearing the word "Trump." It featured four images of the president that users could punch or scratch with the kitten's paw.
Lucy created the site for her job-hunt portfolio. A few weeks after it launched, however, she got a letter from Trump's lawyers. They told her she named the site after someone "internationally known and famous" and could be cited for trademark infringement, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
So, Lucy changed its name to Kitten Feed. Sometime later, she claimed she received another cease and desist letter. Trump's lawyers said she had been selling anti-Trump merchandise links on her site, so she promptly removed this.
Lucy expressed her disappointment over the letters. "The fact that as president he still has teams going around bothering to shut down silly sites like mine is outrageous," she said.
A deeper look into the claims, however, revealed Lucy might have never received any letters from Trump's lawyers at all. Gizmodo looked into Kitten Feed's records online and learned some details didn't match. There might have never been any Lucy, too.
Gizmodo found out the supposed cease and desist letters were sent before the website went live. The site suspected Kitten Feed was trolling everyone on the internet, where major sites picked up on the news about Trump going after a teenager. Snopes also did some fact-checking and arrived at the same conclusion.
Meanwhile, representatives from the Trump Organization confirmed they did not send a teenager any cease and desist letter. They told Observer Lucy's story was false and no news agency contacted them before running her story.
