US doesn’t know if Russia’s Navalny was poisoned, says Trump

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump said the US doesn’t know directly whether Alexey Navalny was poisoned, failing to accept the German government’s assessment that the Russian opposition leader was attacked with a nerve agent.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that medical tests showed “unequivocally” that Navalny had been poisoned by a military-grade novichok nerve agent.
Asked about the German conclusion at a news conference, Trump said, “I hear Germany has made it definitive, or almost definitive, but we have not seen it ourselves.”
Navalny, a leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, fell ill on a domestic flight to Moscow from Tomsk in August. He was evacuated to a German hospital under international pressure.
Kremlin officials have challenged Germany’s conclusion, saying that Merkel’s government hasn’t provided proof.
A novichok agent was used in the March 2018 attempted murder of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter on British soil, prompting a concerted expulsion of 150 Russian diplomats from NATO nations. Later in his news conference, though, Trump agreed that it was likely Navalny had been poisoned. “Based on what Germany’s saying, that seems to be the case,” he said.