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This article is more than 1 year old

That 'Trump lawyers threaten teen over kitten website' yarn is Fakey Fakey McFake Fakeface

Sad!

Updated There's a rather dodgy tale going around that US President Donald Trump's lawyers sent cease-and-desist letters to a website featuring his face being pawed by kittens.

The unbelievable yarn was picked up this week by The Hollywood Reporter and the New York Observer. The story goes that a San Francisco 17-year-old called Lucy set up the website trumpscratch.com for a laugh, with little cats pawing at Donald's face, then allegedly received a letter from The Trump Organization informing her she was infringing the Trump trademark.

Apparently, she then switched from trumpscratch.com to kittenfeed.com, and got a second cease-and-desist demand after linking to the sales page for a T-shirt with an anti-Trump message – again, allegedly.

Trumpscratch.com now redirects to the NSFW trumptytrump.com, which looks like a spammy low-rate porn site.

The Trump Organization's chief legal officer says no such letters were ever sent to the teen. "This is completely false," Alan Garten said after journalists asked why on Earth the president's company was menacing cat-based websites.

The Hollywood Reporter "now has significant doubts" about the story – and so do we. Lucy said she got the first threatening letter on March 1 but trumpscratch.com was registered on March 22, which pretty much slots a bullet in the whole sorry tale.

Oops. ®

Editor's note: This article was updated after publication with confirmed dates of the trumpscratch.com domain registration, which rather kills the whole thing dead. We're happy to clarify the situation.

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