A man who set himself ablaze outside ex-President Donald Trump’s hush money trial courtroom has been identified as a conspiracy theorist who wrote an eerie manifesto.
The man who lit himself on fire outside Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday afternoon has been identified by police as Max Azzarello, 37, of St Augustine, Florida.
Just before dousing himself with gasoline and igniting, Azzarello tossed pamphlets in the air with links to his writings on a Substack page called The Ponzi Papers.
Azzarello’s post was titled ‘I have set myself on fire outside the Trump Trial’ and dated April 19.
‘My name is Max Azzarello, and I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan,’ he writes.
‘This extreme act of protest is to draw attention to an urgent and important discover.’
His rambling post includes conspiracy theories on topics ranging from ex-President Bill Clinton to the coronavirus to cryptocurrency.
‘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,’ he writes.
‘These claims sound like fantastical conspiracy theory, but they are not. They are proof of conspiracy.’
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