The New York Observer reported on Tuesday that the Trump Organization sent a cease and desist letter to a California teenager requesting that she take down her website, but the Trump Organization denies they ever sent such a letter.
Supposedly, 17-year-old Lucy created a website called TrumpScratch.com in early March, where users can scratch up Trump's digital face with kitten claws. TrumpScratch.com is now a pornography site.
An alleged cease and desist letter later threatened legal action, leading Lucy to switch the site's domain name to KittenFeed.com. Lucy claims Trump's lawyers continue to go after her.
"I was going to just let this go, but I think it’s, pardon my French, fucking outrageous that the president of the United States has his team scouring the internet for sites like mine," Lucy wrote in an email to the Observer. "HOW ABOUT BEING THE PRESIDENT?"
After the story was published, Trump Organization's executive vice president and chief legal officer Alan Garten denied any of it was true.
"This is completely false," he told the Observer. "No such letter was ever sent by us."
Garten claimed the Observer never reached out to Trump Organization for comment, while the publication insists they did.
Even before the official denial, Twitter sleuths noted that Lucy's story didn't seem to add up. The most telling clue is that TrumpScratch.com was only registered as a domain for the first time the day after the piece went live.
Kittenfeed.com, supposedly the "new" domain, has been registered for weeks. But Twitter user Asher Langton noticed that the first two people to tweet the link out both work for the same California-based digital marketing firm: Hawke Media.
Site allegedly created by teen who then received Trump C&D was first mentioned here. cc: @SageLazzaro @Tom_Maguire pic.twitter.com/wtt2ziiqJp
— Asher Langton (@AsherLangton) March 22, 2017
When the article's author was asked to share a copy of the cease and desist letter on Twitter, she declined.
@loweringthebar Hi, I can't because of an agreement with my source.
— Sage Lazzaro (@SageLazzaro) March 21, 2017