NEW YORK — A Florida man set himself on fire in a park across from Manhattan Criminal Court Friday where former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial continues, according to a report.

Court officers and cops monitoring the press outside raced over to help put out the fire, which erupted in a penned-off section of Collect Pond Park across the street from the courthouse at about 1:30 p.m.

“I was about 20 to 30 feet from him. I started yelling, ‘This guy’s doing something, he might be doing something!” Fred Gates, who witnessed the fire, told the Daily News. “When he… when the fire (broke out) it was just disbelief,” he said.

“I never saw anything like this.”

Authorities at a press conference identified the man as Max Azzarello, of St. Augustine, Florida. He remains in critical condition at New York Presbyterian-Cornell Hospital.

Azzarello, described by authorities as a “conspiracy theorist,” posted a rambling manifesto just before the blaze began.

“I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan,” he wrote. “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.”

The man, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, had signs made of oaktag in front of him and was handing out fliers when he suddenly threw all the paper in the air, witnesses said.

“(It was a) very scary, active scene,” Politico reporter Emily Ngo wrote as she posted graphic video of the fire on X. “Did not hear him say anything before he dosed himself with a fluid.”

The flames reached about 8 feet high as firefighters and other first responders extinguished the blaze, images from the incident show. After the fire was extinguished, EMS rushed him to a hospital for treatment.

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