The man who lit himself on fire on Friday outside of the Manhattan courthouse where jury selection for Donald Trump’s hush-money trial was taking place has died, New York police confirmed to multiple news outlets Saturday morning.
The man, identified by police as Max Azzarello, 37, was in Collect Pond Park in Lower Manhattan on Friday when, at around 1:30 pm, he threw conspiratorial pamphlets in the air and doused himself in liquid accelerant before lighting himself on fire, according to several reports of the incident.
Because there was a significant police presence around the courthouse for Trump’s judicial proceedings, dozens of officers quickly attempted to extinguish the blaze, the Associated Press reported. Azzarello was rushed to a local hospital but succumbed to his injuries later that night.
Azzarello had lingered outside the same courthouse a day earlier with a sign bearing the name of his Substack newsletter, on which he had also uploaded the pamphlets, The New York Times reported. He had another sign reading, “Trump is with Biden, and they’re about to fascist coup us.”
As of Friday, the latest post on the Substack begins, “I have set myself on fire outside the Trump Trial.” Calling himself an “investigative researcher,” Azzarello writes that he discovered a plot from “our own government (along with many of their allies)” to “hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup.” The 2600-odd-word post goes on to rail against cryptocurrency, the Clintons, Harvard University, the Simpsons television show, and more.
In an interview with the NYT on Thursday in Collect Pond Park, Azzarello said his views stemmed from his research into American venture capitalist Peter Thiel, whose Founders Fund has been a major crypto investor. Investigators also found his conspiracy theorist screeds in the online manifesto, which claims the digital currency is “our first planetary multi-trillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.”
Azzarello didn’t breach any security checkpoints set up for the trial, but New York City Police Department Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry said in a Friday news conference, “We may have to shut this area down.” Jury selection in Trump’s first criminal case to go to trial wrapped up on Friday, and the proceedings are expected to continue with opening statements on Monday.
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