TRUMP TRIAL 

Man Who Self-Immolated Near Trump Trial Has Died: How It Happened

By Intelligencer Staff
Photo: Obtained by New York Magazine

The man who set himself on fire across the street from the Manhattan courthouse where Donald Trump is on trial has died. Max Azzarello, 37, was pronounced dead at a city hospital early Saturday, according to police. The act of self-immolation was not directly related to the trial: He wrote in paranoid manifesto that he took his own life to bring attention to a set of conspiratorial beliefs. Below are live updates on this developing story.

 
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The man died of his injuries

Max Azzarello succumbed to his extensive injuries while being treated at Weill Cornell Medicine’s burn unit, police confirmed overnight.

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Azzarello’s life began to unravel after the death of his mother

According to the New York Times, people who know Azzarello say he seemed to have succumbed to paranoid thoughts in recent years, particularly after losing his mother to an illness in 2022:

A closer look at the path the man had traveled to this moment of self-destruction revealed a recent spiral into volatility, one marked by a worldview that had become increasingly confusing and disjointed — and appeared to be unattached to any political party. His social media postings and arrest records suggest the immolation stemmed instead from a place of conspiracy theories and paranoia.

Read the rest of their report here.

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He was interviewed on Thursday

From the Times’ report on the self-immolation:

At the park on Thursday, Mr. Azzarello had held up various signs and at one point shouted toward a group of reporters gathered there: “Biggest scoop of your life or your money back!” One of his signs claimed that Mr. Trump and President Biden were “about to fascist coup us.”

 

In an interview that day, he said his critical views of the American government were shaped by his research into Peter Thiel, the technology billionaire and political provocateur who is a major campaign donor, and into cryptocurrency.

 

Mr. Azzarello said he had planned to protest at Washington Square Park near New York University but thought that with the cold weather, more people would be outside the courthouse.

“Trump’s in on it,” Mr. Azzarello said on Thursday. “It’s a secret kleptocracy, and it can only lead to an apocalyptic fascist coup.” …

 

Some of the pamphlets [Azzarello threw in the air before setting himself ablaze on Friday] referred to New York University as a “mob front” and also mentioned former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Al Gore and the lawyer David Boies, who represented Mr. Gore in the 2000 presidential election recount. Another pamphlet contained anti-government conspiracy theories, though they did not point in a discernible political direction.