Maxwell Azzarello, the 37-year-old Florida man who lit himself on fire outside of the criminal trial for former President Donald Trump, praised "martyrs" and cited a former U.S. military member who lit himself on fire and died in protest.
Law enforcement responded to the courthouse at about 1:37 p.m. ET for a report of a man who was on fire. He was taken to an area hospital in critical condition, and an investigation is ongoing, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department told Newsweek Friday afternoon. There is not believed to be a further threat to public safety at this time.
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. Several news networks including Fox News and CNN were conducting live reports when the incident occurred.
WARNING: The following message and photo are graphic.
"Heroes and martyrs, folks," Azzarello posted on his Instagram page, date unknown. "God f****** bless you, Aaron Bushnell."
Bushnell, 25, an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy this past February in Washington, D.C., to protest Israel's war in Gaza.
"My name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide," Bushnell said in a video of the incident. "I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."
Like Bushnell, Azzarello released his own manifesto before his act on Friday.
"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," he wrote. "These claims sound like fantastical conspiracy theory, but they are not. They are proof of conspiracy. If you investigate this mountain of research, you will prove them too. If you learn a great deal about Ponzi schemes, you will discover that our life is a lie. If you follow this story and the links below, you will discover the rotten truth of 'post-truth America'. You will learn the scariest and stupidest story in world history. And you will realize that we are all in a desperate state of emergency that requires your action.
"To my friends and family, witnesses and first responders, I deeply apologize for inflicting this pain upon you. But I assure you it is a drop in the bucket compared to what our government intends to inflict. Because these words are true, this is an act of revolution."
Then, minutes before he lit himself, he posted the same repetitive message on his Instagram story: "I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you," the story said.
A LinkedIn profile that appears to be Azzarello identifies him as a self-employed research investigator who attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2005 and 2009, and later attended Rutgers University from 2010 to 2012, receiving a Master's in City and Regional Planning.
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Nick Mordowanec is a Newsweek reporter based in Michigan. His focus is reporting on Ukraine and Russia, along with social ... Read more
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