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The guy who lit himself on fire outside Manhattan court docket all through former President Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial Friday is a self-described “investigative researcher” who arrived in New York prior to now few days, police mentioned.
Max Azzarello, 37, of St. Augustine, made the travel as much as the Big Apple from the Sunshine State someday previous this week, and his circle of relatives have been unaware he had traveled to town, police mentioned.
“What we know from speaking to other witnesses and family members is that he arrived in New York sometime earlier week,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny mentioned at a press convention. “We had his car being in St. Augustine on the 13th, so anywhere between the 13th and today.”
Moments sooner than he doused himself in fuel and set himself ablaze, Azzarello tossed a stack of pamphlets into the air, which incorporated hyperlinks to a Substack e-newsletter it seems that authored through the self-immolator referred to as “The Ponzi Papers.”
At the highest of the website online is a piece of writing with the headline “I have set myself on fire outside of the trump Trial,” adopted through a rambling manifesto riddled with conspiracy theories on the whole lot from cryptocurrency and Hollywood actors to COVID and previous President Bill Clinton.
“My name is Max Azzarello, and I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan,” the just about 2,700-word posting starts.
“This extreme act of protest is to draw attention to an urgent and important discovery: We are victims of a totalitarian con, and our own government (along with many of their allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup.”
Though public data display a St. Augustine, Florida cope with for Azzarello’s most up-to-date recognized place of dwelling, assets inform The Post they imagine he’s homeless.
A 2017 weblog post through the nonprofit Strong Towns, which has since been taken offline, options Max Azzarello and proclaims him as their new expansion supervisor.
In his blurb, Azzarello alludes to his “childhood town” as a “charming, friendly, eclectic community in Long Island, New York.”
The civic engagement-focused group says Azzarello’s “passions” come with “chess, creative writing, and Medieval Scandinavian poetry.”
His RelatedIn profile image displays him posing with Bill Clinton, whom he sued final 12 months at the side of 100 different influential defendants in a conspiracy theory-tinged case that was once tossed out final October when he didn’t practice up.
Other defendants named within the 2023 swimsuit he filed in Manhattan federal court docket incorporated Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, the rustic of Saudi Arabia, and Texas billionaire and 1992 Independent presidential candidate Ross Perot, who died in 2019.
At the NYPD press convention held in a while after Azzarello was once stretchered into an ambulance, Kenny referred to as the incident “propaganda”-based.
“We’re looking through his social media and what he did online prior and it does appear he posted something online prior to this incident,” Kenny mentioned.
NYPD’s Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey mentioned “we’re very concerned,” and that Azzarello “did not breach security protocols.”
Cops mentioned Azzarello was once taken to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, the place he’s in crucial situation.