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

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday the U.S. 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 Wednesday 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 Friday, 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.

But he didn’t say whether the U.S. would take any specific action in response. “We have to look at it very seriously if that’s the case,” he said.

— Bloomberg News

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Texas assistant attorney general loses his job after tweets targeting Muslims, social justice protests

AUSTIN, Texas — An assistant attorney general for Texas has lost his job after a national media report detailed social media posts that encouraged violence against Black Lives Matters protesters, likened Islam to a virus and dismissed the fight for LGBTQ rights as “normalizing perversion.”

The report by Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog, also highlighted Nick Moutos’ support for the conspiracy theories behind QAnon, which sees President Donald Trump as a leading hero in the fight against satanic pedophiles who secretly run the government.

Moutos was an assistant attorney general in the Criminal Prosecutions Division until Thursday, when the Media Matters report was published online.

An agency spokeswoman confirmed that Moutos was no longer employed by Attorney General Ken Paxton but declined to discuss the matter further.

Moutos acknowledged in a Thursday night Twitter post that media scrutiny was “enough to cost me my job.”

“Speaking out against the #ChinaVirus #Plandemic & #Democrats using it to steal #Election2020 makes people angry,” he added, referring to a conspiracy theory that sees the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a scheme for profit and control.

Moutos has tweeted that America is in the midst of a second civil war with “globalists,” Democrats and Black Lives Matter activists on one side and patriots supporting gun rights on the other. Those patriots bought more than 1.7 million guns in May, he warned, and several of his tweets included a NoWarningShots hashtag.

Moutos was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Congress earlier this year, coming in third in a three-way primary to face Democratic U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett.

— Austin American-Statesman

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R. Kelly asks again to be released from jail after inmate says he beat the R&B singer

CHICAGO — Lawyers for indicted singer R. Kelly filed a motion Friday seeking to question under oath a reputed gang member who said he violently attacked Kelly at the federal lockup in Chicago because he wanted to expose government corruption.

Jeremiah Shane Farmer, a convicted member of the Latin Kings, outed himself as Kelly’s attacker in a court filing earlier this week in Hammond, where he’s facing a mandatory life sentence for racketeering conspiracy involving a 1999 double murder.

Farmer, 39, claimed he attacked Kelly “in hopes of getting spotlight attention and world news notice to shed light on” wrongdoing by the government.

According to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons report attached to his filing, Farmer was able to slip away from an employee at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on Aug. 26, enter Kelly’s cell and beat him repeatedly in the head while Kelly was in the lower bunk. The attack stopped only after a jail security officer pepper-sprayed Farmer, the report states.

In the Friday court filing, Kelly’s attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber for an evidentiary hearing giving them and the judge the opportunity to question Farmer under oath about the alleged beating, “including, but not limited to the role that any MCC personnel played in that attack.”

“It appears that MCC personnel simply followed Mr. Farmer, allowed him to carry out the attack, and then only intervened after Mr. Kelly had already sustained serious injuries,” Kelly’s attorney Michael Leonard wrote.

Kelly’s lawyers have said that when the singer’s supporters previously demonstrated in front of the MCC, the facility went on lockdown — making Kelly’s fellow inmates angry at him.

— Chicago Tribune

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2 ‘Boogaloo Bois’ charged with conspiring with terrorist organization

MINNEAPOLIS — Two members of the “Boogaloo Bois” have been indicted on federal charges of attempting to provide material support to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization, the U.S. Justice Department announced Friday.

The Boogaloo Bois are a loose-knit group of violent anti-government extremists. The heavily armed members often mobilize on social media, and have garnered more prominence and law enforcement scrutiny this year. The term “Boogaloo” references a second civil war in the United States and is associated with violent anti-government uprisings, according to the complaint.

Michael Robert Solomon, 30, of New Brighton, Minnesota, and Benjamin Ryan Teeter, 22, of Hampstead, North Carolina, allegedly sought to capitalize on the unrest following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Solomon was seen openly carrying a firearm in a residential neighborhood, according to a witness.

The FBI began an investigation into Solomon, Teeter and a subgroup called the “Boojahideen” at the end of May, according to the affidavit.

“This case can only be understood as a disturbing example of the old adage, ‘The enemy of your enemy is your friend,’?” said U.S. Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers. “As alleged in the complaint, these defendants sought to use violence against the police, other government officials and government property as part of their desire to overthrow the government.”

— Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

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