The man who lit himself on fire outside Manhattan court during former President Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial Friday had been arrested twice in Florida in the last year, police reports obtained by The Post show.
Max Azzarello was arrested in St. Augustine and booked on Aug. 21, 2023, on charges he disturbed the peace. He was let go the next day and then arrested again on Aug. 24 on charges of damage to property and criminal mischief.
At the second booking cops noted he was suicidal and in the bizarre accompanying mugshot, Azzarello can be seen sticking out his tongue with one eye closed.
On both occasions, he was listed as unemployed. Azzarello remained in the St. Johns County jail until Oct. 3, when he was sentenced to 180 days of probation and released.
Shortly before the two arrests, in an August 9, 2023 Facebook post, Azzarello also said he spent “three days in the psych ward,” although there was no way to immediately verify that claim.
Azzarello also posted four months ago on his Instagram that he had been “protesting and breaking unwritten rules in St. Augustine, taunting the cops, embracing the homeless, celebrating the freedom of leaving a cult, and begging anybody and everybody to join me in this liberation.”
Azzarello, 37, describes himself in online profiles as an “investigative researcher,” but his voluminous postings and rants show him to be more of a conspiracy theorist.
He came to New York last week, though his family was unaware he had traveled out of Florida, New York City police said.
Just before he self-immolated, Azzarello threw papers into the air, which included printouts of a Substack newsletter he dubbed “The Ponzi Papers.”
The last entry in his was an article entitled, “I have set myself on fire outside the Trump trial,” accompanied by a manifesto riddled with conspiracy theories and mentions of prominent figures.
He mentioned former president Bill Clinton, who he had attempted to sue last year in a huge, but conspiracy-laden filing with more than 100 other individuals named.
The case was quickly thrown out.
“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 nearly 2,700-word posting begins.
“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.”
In the arrest records, Azzarello is listed as a resident of St. Augustine, Florida.
