The man who lit himself on fire in a park outside former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial was arrested three times in Florida last year – including for throwing wine at a framed autograph featuring Bill Clinton, according to police records.
Max Azzarello’s legal trouble in the Sunshine State spanned several days and he was hit with misdemeanor charges of criminal mischief and disturbing the peace, according to the records obtained by The Post.
In one of his mug shots, Azzarello can be seen with his tongue sticking out and one eye closed.
The 37-year-old’s first run-in with St. Augustine police came Aug. 19, 2023 when he allegedly tossed a glass of wine at Bill Clinton’s autograph on a wall protected by a frame inside the lobby of the Casa Monica Hotel, a report states.
“The wine glass broke, spreading wine on the frame, the wall, and the autograph,” the report alleged. “…The wine stained the autograph and the surrounding wall when it ran down behind the frame.”
Two days later, he again was arrested for allegedly stripping down to his boxers and yelling at customers at the same hotel as part of other erratic behavior, another report states.
An officer also saw him allegedly get into a fountain on a nearby property and curse out hotel customers “in an intimidating manner,” before he was taken into custody on Aug. 21.
Then on Aug. 24 he was seen on surveillance video allegedly writing on a small sign outside the Little Free Library before breaking a pest control sign next door, according to a police report.
The destroyed sign warned passerby the yard had been treated and that pets and children should stay away from it, per the police report.
“Azzarello was misinterpreting the sign and was telling me that the pest control company was there to exterminate children and dogs,” an officer wrote in the report.
Police paperwork from the final arrest indicated Azzarello was suicidal. He was also 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.
Before his slew of 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 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, the NYPD 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.
