Conspiracy theorist Max Azzarello, who set himself on fire across the street from former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial on Friday, has died.
An NYPD spokesperson told The Daily Beast on Saturday that the 37-year-old was taken to New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in critical condition but died shortly before 11 p.m. Friday.
Police earlier said Azzarello was from St. Augustine, Florida, and did not appear to be targeting Trump or others involved in the trial.
He had earlier posted online saying the act was an “extreme act of protest …to draw attention to an urgent and important discovery.”
His Substack manifesto railed against cryptocurrency, New York University, the Clintons, and the world’s governments, saying the readers are “victims of a totalitarian con” similar to a Ponzi scheme.
The horrific self-immolation occurred at 1:35 p.m. when Azzarello removed multiple pamphlets from his bag, doused himself in an alcohol-based accelerant and set himself on fire.
Those who knew Azzarello told The Daily Beast that he’d “gone a little haywire” in recent years, with his posts to Facebook growing more and more unhinged.
“[He is] a very personable guy, not an idiot when you’re sitting around talking with him, but over the course of the last few years he’s become more and more involved with the thought process that everything is a conspiracy against the common person,” his former landlord, Larry Altman, told The Daily Beast. “Authority is not doing anything to help you.”