Man Accused of $37 Billion LA Fire Is Innocent, His Lawyer Says

(Bloomberg) -- Jonathan Rinderknecht has been wrongly accused of starting the most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles history, his lawyer told a jury.

Rinderknecht was watching New Year’s Eve fireworks on a hillside in the Pacific Palisades and called 911 just after midnight on the morning of Jan. 1, 2025, as a “concerned citizen” to report a brush fire, only to be charged nine months later with arson, defense attorney Steve Haney said at the start of his client’s trial in Los Angeles federal court.

“There won’t be any proof that Jonathan Rinderknecht started that fire,” Haney said. The evidence “will show panic, it will show confusion it will show a frightened young man repeatedly and desperately calling for help from the hillside.”

A federal prosecutor told jurors that Rinderknecht hiked to a spot known as Hidden Buddha Hill, above a neighborhood filled with multimillion-dollar homes stretching down to Malibu on the coast, and intentionally set a fire in the bushes with a barbecue lighter later found in his car. 

In his opening statement, Assistant US Attorney Matthew O’Brien showed jurors large images taken from surveillance cameras that showed the eruption of the fire that night. He said investigators had traced Rinderknecht’s movements while he used his cell phone. The data placed Rinderknecht at the place where investigators later concluded was the fire’s point of origin, O’Brien said.

The blaze he’s accused of igniting, known as the Lachman Fire, was contained by firefighters, but was allegedly rekindled on Jan. 7, 2025, by hurricane-force winds, morphing into a massive conflagration, the Palisades Fire, that killed at least 12 people, charred more than 23,000 acres and destroyed or damaged almost 8,000 structures. Insured losses from the fire were estimated by Gallagher Re at $23 billion, while total economic losses were projected at $37 billion.

Rinderknecht, who had lived in the area, was working as an Uber driver and dropped off a passenger near where the fire started, according to the government. 

Haney claims Rinderknecht has been made a “scapegoat” for the failure of firefighters to fully extinguish the Jan. 1 blaze before its embers flared up six days later. 

The government says Rinderknecht was bent on destruction. 

Prosecutors in the office of Los Angeles Acting US Attorney Bill Essayli said in a court filing that Rinderknecht’s Uber passengers on New Year’s Eve recalled that he appeared agitated and sounded distraught that he had no plans for the evening after a failed relationship.

A forensic review of Rinderknecht’s computer also revealed that he “became increasingly angry with his life and society at large,” according to prosecutors, who said he was “fixated on Luigi Mangione,” the Ivy League graduate regarded by many as an anti-corporate hero after he was charged with gunning down a health insurance executive in Manhattan in December 2024.

When Rinderknecht was questioned by investigators days after the fire about why someone would commit arson in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, prosecutors said, he “responded it would be out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as ‘we’re basically being enslaved by them.’” 

US District Judge Anne Hwang, who is presiding over the trial, has blocked both sides from putting on evidence that she determined is either irrelevant or inflammatory.

Haney won’t be allowed to present testimony from a firefighter that crews were ordered to leave the area where the fire started, and allegedly rekindled days later, despite multiple lingering hot spots. 

The judge barred the government from showing jurors AI-generated images of a city afire that prosecutors said Rinderknecht created months before the fire. Haney called the ChatGPT imagery “very, very prejudicial.”

Rinderknecht is charged with three counts, including destruction of property by means of fire, arson affecting property used in interstate commerce and timber set on fire. 

The trial is expected to take about 10 days. If convicted, the US says, Rinderknecht faces as long as 45 years in prison.

The case is US v Rinderknecht, 25-cr-833, US District Court, Central District of California (Los Angeles).

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