The man who set himself on fire outside of former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan wrote an online manifesto before self-immolating Friday afternoon.
Law enforcement officers told Newsweek that members of the New York Police Department (NYPD) rushed to provide aid after a person set themselves ablaze across the street from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, where Trump is on trial for allegedly falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult film actress during the 2016 election.
Newsweek reporter Katherine Fung, who has been reporting from inside the courtroom all week, said the man was holding a sign before the incident, which included a link to a Substack site. A letter on the site was entitled, “I have set myself on fire outside the Trump Trial.”
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
“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 site reads.
“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.”
Read the entire manifesto below:
This is a developing story and will be updated when more information becomes available.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.