Stone claims polonium poisoning

For more than a year, Roger Stone has asserted that he spent Christmas of 2016 trying to survive an assassination attempt — most likely radioactive polonium poisoning — by someone trying to frame Russia.

Tests were conducted; doctors were baffled, the longtime political operative and adviser to Donald Trump told journalists. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was contacted.

But from the moment he made the claims, Stone has deflected questions when asked to back up his claims.

It happened again Friday, in a wide-ranging conversation with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Trump. At one point, Cooper said he had questions about Stone’s polonium assertions.

“I was extraordinarily ill,” Stone told Cooper, before referring to pictures of his face during the period. “You can see in the file footage that you used at the beginning of the segment that I still have lesions on my face from that illness. My doctor believed I was poisoned.”

Stone wouldn’t go into detail when Cooper asked for proof, even when the host insisted that “Polonium poisoning, that would be a huge issue in the United States if someone was poisoned with polonium.”

He directed viewers to “my Infowars report on it.” The Alex Jones-hosted website airs conspiracy theories.

As Stone spoke on CNN, a former Russian spy and his daughter were recovering from a poisoning attempt in a British town that the British government says points to Russia.

The poisoning last month of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, has triggered a diplomatic crisis between Russia and the West. Britain and dozens of other countries, including the United States, have expelled more than 150 Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity. Russia, in turn, has ordered the expulsion of Western diplomats from embassies in Moscow and ordered closures of consulates, including the U.S. facility in Saint Petersburg.

Skripal, 66, is a former colonel in Russia’s military intelligence service who was convicted of helping British agents, then freed in a spy swap. She is a 33-yearold who had just dined with her father at a restaurant named Zizzi.