Trump sends cease-and-desist to 17-year-old student over cat website

UPDATE: The executive vice president and chief legal officer at The Trump Organization, Alan Garten, has reacted to the story below and claimed US President Donald Trump never sent a letter threatening to sue a teenager for creating a cat website. “This is completely false. No such letter was ever sent by us,” Garten said.

Original story:

A website has reported US President Donald Trump is supposedly threatening to sue a 17-year-old girl for creating a cat website featuring his face. There has been, however, no official confirmation as of this writing. A certain Lucy from San Francisco, California, supposedly created a site called TrumpScratch.com, wherein visitors get to scratch Trump’s face with cat claws to their satisfaction. The American leader was not having it, says the source.

The 17-year-old high school student supposedly said she was served with a cease and desist letter from the president’s general counsel in New York three weeks after her website went live. The letter began by calling Trump a “well-known businessman” and television star, probably referring to the former “The Apprentice” star’s days as a reality TV actor. “As I’m sure you’re aware, the Trump name is internationally known and famous,” the letter, quoted by the Observer, reads.

Lucy has then supposedly changed the name of her website to KittenFeed.com on the advice of her family lawyer. Reports say it only took her three hours to code the website, a coding project that she could put on her resume. Although she called it a “fun, little” project, she had Trump’s face as target “out of principle.”

“I was going to just let this go, but I think it’s, pardon my French, f------ outrageous that the president of the United States has his team scouring the Internet for sites like mine to send out cease and desists and legal action claims if we shut down,” Lucy told the publication. “Meanwhile, he tweets about ‘The Apprentice’ ratings and sends out power-drunk tweets about phone tapping. HOW ABOUT BEING THE PRESIDENT?”

It was not clarified what demands Trump’s legal team wanted from her. Lucy still hasn’t responded to Trump after changing her website’s name. She and her lawyer are still waiting for Trump’s next move.

Countless lawsuits have been linked to the American president. He had sued and been sued thousands of times over the past three decades. In the data collated by USA Today last year, Trump and his businesses sued for branding and trademark cases, contract disputes, and employment cases among many others. They also faced lawsuits that range from labour and personal injury claims to government and taxes cases. Trump himself has also threatened to sue media outlets and individuals over the years for defamation.

Earlier this year, his wife, Melania, filed a US$150 million (AU$196 million) suit against UK paper the Daily Mail for publishing apparently damaging allegations. Her legal team argued that Melania had the “unique, once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity as a first lady of the US, which she could have used to garner multimillion-dollar business deals and endorsements, but that the newspaper has damaged it by publishing the unfounded allegations.

Read more about the update: Donald Trump vs 17-year-old’s cat website story may be false; US President’s lawyers deny sending C&D