Omalu, whose story was famously told in the movie ‘‘Concussion,’’ made the suggestion on Twitter, writing that he advised campaign officials to ‘‘perform toxicologic analysis of Ms. Clinton’s blood.’’

Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who has made the NFL so uncomfortable with his discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brains of deceased players, suggests that Hillary Clinton’s campaign be checked for possible poisons after her collapse Sunday in New York.

‘‘I must advice [sic] the Clinton campaign to perform toxicologic analysis of Ms. Clinton’s blood. It is possible she is being poisoned.’’

But this is Omalu, whose credentials and tenacity are well known. He wasn’t giving up on Twitter, adding that his reasoning is that he does not trust Russian President Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee who has expressed admiration for Putin.


Putin, as The Washington Post reported, was implicated by a British inquiry in January in the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB operative, in London in 2006. The Post’s Griff Witte and Michael Birnbaum wrote at the time:

Although the inquiry stops short of conclusively blaming Putin - noting the opaque nature of Kremlin politics - it finds that there is ‘‘strong circumstantial evidence that the Russian State was responsible for Mr. Litvinenko’s death.’’ And citing the high-stakes nature of an operation to assassinate a former KGB officer on British soil, it finds that the operation would probably not have gone ahead without Putin’s direct approval.

Omalu, famously played by Will Smith in ‘‘Concussion,’’ has studied and obtained a number of degrees. Born in Nigeria, he became a U.S. citizen in 2015. He became known for the tenacity with which he pursued the deaths of several former Pittsburgh Steelers during his time in the city’s medical examiner’s office. Eventually, he convinced skeptics that players were suffering brain damage as the result of taking a number of blows to the head.


He wasn’t stopping with just one tweet about Clinton and poison. At 10:53 p.m. Sept. 11, Omalu tweeted:

‘‘I do not trust Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. With those two all things are possible.’’