The Florida man who set himself on fire outside of former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York has died from his injuries.
Max Azzarello, 37, from St. Augustine, succumbed to his injuries from self-immolation on Friday night — hours after being transported to the hospital.
The protester had poured an accelerant on himself and lit a fire in full view of national media outlets that were reporting from outside the trial.
Azzarello described himself as “an investigative researcher” in a Substack post titled, “I have set myself on fire outside the Trump Trial.”
On Instagram, Azzarello had posted a photo from Politicon in which he is wearing a Bernie Sanders shirt that reads “Eat the Rich” and posing with Newt Gingrich. In the caption, he joked that he had got to meet Sanders.
The deceased protester’s Instagram page was still active as of early Saturday morning.
He had also posted on Facebook about spending three days in a psych ward in August.
Azzarello’s online manifesto contained a complex conspiracy theory involving Peter Thiel, cryptocurrency, and “an apocalyptic fascist world coup.”
Before fatally lighting himself on fire, Azzarello had been seen outside the courthouse holding a sign that read, “Trump is with Biden and they’re about to facist coup us.”
The Daily Mail reports, “the activist had recently completed 180 days probation for a string of incidents in The Sunshine state, involving either disorderly conduct and destruction of property – and overall erratic, ‘rambling’ behavior.”
“DailyMail.com obtained criminal complaints for each, all taking place within a matter of days in August,” the report continued.
During the first incident, Azzarello allegedly threw wine at a framed and autographed photo of former President Bill Clinton at the Casa Monica Hotel in Saint Augustine on August 19. He then threw his glass at the photograph, breaking the frame and damaging the autograph with his drink.
On August 21, he was again arrested at the hotel, after they reported him for “standing outside, stripping his clothes off and yelling at customers.” The police report, obtained by the Mail, said he was “wearing nothing but his underwear, standing on the sidewalk[, and] holing [sic] a speaker blasting music and yelling.”
Three days later, on August 24, “he was arrested once more for graffitiing property and rifling through a woman’s belongings in the flatbed of her truck, after allegedly being seen yelling in someone’s yards after ‘misinterpreting’ an exterminator’s sign warning people to keep their children and pets off a lawn that had just been treated,” the Mail reports.
Azzarello was reportedly convinced that the pest company was trying to “exterminate children and dogs.”