Last October, Jonathan Rinderknecht was arrested...
Today we are announcing the arrest of 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht on a criminal complaint charging him with maliciously starting what became the Palisades Fire in January.
— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) October 8, 2025
⁰The complaint alleges that Rinderknecht's started a fire in Pacific Palisades on New Year's Day --… pic.twitter.com/UzrFa0Lmrz
...and charged with starting the Lachman fire.
...Rinderknecht was an Uber driver at the time, and how they zeroed in on this guy and then tracked him down is some wild stuff.
The story allegedly starts when Rinderknecht drove up into Pacific Palisades after work. He had been so agitated that evening that even a couple of his Uber fares remembered his angry attitude.
...Essayli said Rinderknecht drove Pacific Palisades after working the evening shift as an Uber driver. Two of his passengers told law enforcement that he appeared agitated and angry that night. Rinderknecht—who once lived in the neighborhood—drove towards Skull Rock Trailhead, parked his car and attempted to contact a former friend.
He then used his iPhone to take videos at a nearby hilltop area and listened to a rap song whose music video included items being lit on fire, prosecutors said.
During the next five minutes, prosecutors said Rinderknecht called 911 several times, but didn’t get through because he didn’t have cell service in the area. When he finally reached 911, he was at the bottom of the hiking trail and reported the fire. By that time, a resident had already reported the blaze.
That fire smoldered underground after being knocked down by Los Angeles County firefighters, some of whom insisted they'd been prematurely pulled off the job.
To their experienced eyes, that fire wasn't out yet.
Hindsight is 20/20, as the old saying goes. Ordered to pick up their hoses and move off the Lachman fire, the situation was out of their busy and undermanned hands, until it grew into the infamous and devastating Palisades Fire a week later, when those embers reignited as howling Santa Ana winds returned.
7000 homes and businesses, $150B in damages, and twelve dead souls.
After a two-week trial, the jury got the case on Wednesday.
...The case went to the jury on Wednesday, after nearly two weeks of arguments from government prosecutors and the defense and testimony from over a dozen witnesses, including Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents, certified fire investigators, Uber passengers driven by Rinderknecht, a firefighter and arson behavior experts.
Rinderknecht was charged with destruction of property by means of fire, arson affecting property used in interstate commerce and timber set afire. He was arrested on Oct. 7, 2025.
He was not charged with any of the deaths, which were not allowed to come up during the trial. The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on those decisions.
Rinderknecht declined to testify in his own defense.
During the trial, the government characterized Rinderknecht as a malcontent, societal revenge-driven arsonist enraged about wealth disparity and climate change and teeming with anger over his powerlessness, so much so that he used a lighter to set a fire in the clearing of the Hidden Buddha hill on around midnight on Jan. 1, 2025 — the New Year’s Eve Lachman fire. Authorities say it remained underground, smoldering for six days before resurfacing as the Palisades fire on Jan. 7, 2025.
“He went up a hill in a neighborhood in the Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood he personally associated with his personal history with wealth and rejection. And when he went up that hill, he took this lighter with him,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Danbee Kim said during her closing arguments, displaying a picture of a green, long-handled BIC lighter that the prosecution said Rinderknecht used to start the Lachman fire.
The defense argued that the fire could have been sparked by a firework, others could have been on Hidden Buddha hill the night of the blaze and that the prosecution lacked evidence that Rinderknecht started the fire. Rinderknecht’s distaste for the wealthy is not an uncommon feeling in the country, his defense argued.
But by yesterday afternoon, after a weird false alert that a verdict had been reached, the jury indicated to the judge that they were deadlocked.
Nobody was moving off their position to come to a unanimous verdict on Rinderknecht's guilt.
After 13 hours of deliberations, the jury says it is deadlocked in the Palisade fire trial, in which 30-year-old ex-rideshare driver Jonathan Rinderknecht is accused of setting what eventually became the most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles city history.
Jurors sent out a form on Thursday, June 25, at 2:03 p.m. with a box checked indicating that they had a verdict. The U.S. Attorney’s Office immediately issued a news release announcing a verdict had been reached.
But at 2:30 p.m., in a confusing twist, the jury sent out a note saying there were people on both sides who were “dead set” and at a “standstill,” and the panel did not know how to proceed.
U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang asked if there is anything that she could do to help the jury reach a unanimous verdict, including a read-back of testimony or supplemental instruction.
“We cannot reach a unanimous verdict on any of the three charges,” the jury’s return note said, with the word “cannot” underlined.
GO HOME AND THINK ABOUT IT
When everyone came back to the courtroom today, it was still a no-go. The judge polled each juror, and since everyone had dug in their heels, she declared a mistrial.
The federal judge overseeing the trial of the man accused of igniting brush that became the massive and destructive Palisades fire declared a mistrial on Friday, June 26 after the jury insisted it could not reach a verdict on any of the three charges.
U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang polled the panel, asking each juror if more deliberations could thaw the deadlock.
When they answered that they would not, she declared a mistrial — setting the stage for a re-trial starting from scratch.
When asked about the jury’s opinions, the foreperson indicated that the jury was split 10 in favor of not guilty, two in favor of guilty. At least one juror cried.
US Attorney Bill Essayli said he's going to retry the case because the evidence was so strong. Naturally, the defense pointed out that a 10-2 split for acquittal kind of indicates that the jury didn't think so.
Rinderknecht did not testify in his own defense.
...“We fully intend to retry this case before a new jury and obtain guilty verdicts on all charged counts,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli posted on X immediately after the mistrial was declared. “The evidence is strong.”
When he heard Essayli’s comments, defense attorney Steve Haney shot back.
“What he says doesn’t matter to me, he didn’t try the case,” Haney said. “Ten to two is a pretty resounding indication of what the jury felt about this case, and we felt that way from the beginning.
“The jury wasn’t convinced he committed these crimes beyond a reasonable doubt,” Haney said.
LA locals find it baffling about the jury's near-not-guilty verdict as well. One radio host is blown away that there could have been such a divergence in 'Not guilty' votes, given everything he's read about Rinderknecht's actions before and after the fire.
John can’t understand how the jury can be deadlocked on a verdict when Jonathan Rinderknecht was the only person in the area where the Lachman Fire started in Pacific Palisades! The Lachman Fire eventually became the Palisades Fire. @KFIAM640 pic.twitter.com/5jXU0NH585
— The John Kobylt Show (@JohnKobyltRadio) June 26, 2026
As 'circumstantial' goes, the facts that investigators gathered are compelling. Prosecutors introduced ChatGPT attempts to build 'dystopian burning city' images, searches for liability if a cigarette starts a wilderness fire, all sorts of coincidences too strange to be connected to an angry and emotionally disturbed, down-on-his-luck guy calling in a fire from the bottom of a Los Angeles hillside soon afterward.
Cell phone tracking and corroborating video evidence place the suspect at the fire scene.
...When Rinderknecht and his boyfriend broke up, he moved to a small apartment in North Hollywood, “and his life started to deteriorate,” launching a desire for revenge, “revenge against society, because he blamed society for all of his troubles,” the prosecutor said. On New Year’s Eve, O’Brien argued that Rinderknecht was angry about his lack of plans and dropped off an Uber passenger in the Summit neighborhood of the Palisades, a familiar area.
“It was just a block from where he had lived with his romantic partner a few years before,” he said.
That is where the prosecution argues he listened to a French rap song that he had played repeatedly during the preceding week, which “features the singer lighting things on fire and singing about his despair,” O’Brien said. The government argues he started the fire and then called 911 repeatedly to report it, creating a screen recording of himself doing so, as well as asking ChatGPT if one would be at fault if a fire was started because of a cigarette, which the prosecutor called an attempt at an alibi.
Prosecutors also referenced Rinderknecht’s ChatGPT usage, which they called diary-like. He asked the artificial intelligence service why he was so angry all the time. Six months before the January 2025 fires, directed ChatGPT to generate an image of a burning forest, a bunch of people running away from it, with people in poverty trying to get past a gigantic gate with dollar signs on it. In the image, he directed the other side to feature a conglomerate of all the richest people “chilling there,” watching the world burn down, laughing and dancing, according to prosecutors.
So, I guess there's nothing to do but try again with what they have.
🚨 JUST IN: Judge declares a MISTRIAL in the Pacific Palisades arson case in California
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) June 26, 2026
FA US Attorney Bill Essayli has VOWED to file to retry the case, as the fire turned THOUSANDS of homes into ash and kiIIed 12 last year.
The jury became DEADLOCKED, with 10 jurors stuck on… pic.twitter.com/SB1RlPE1NC
...The jury became DEADLOCKED, with 10 jurors stuck on not guilty and 2 hellbent on guilty.
Per Fox, prosecutors have cell phone and video evidence placing the suspect in the location 13 seconds after the fire started, and the Uber driver said the suspected acted erratically that night.
Searches on his phone showed that he that he loved fire and he acted defensively in the police interview.
In addition, the suspect allegedly told ChatGPT he wanted to hold wealthy people accountable with potentially a fire, accusing them of "enslaving people"
It's really kind of stunning, but whatever the jury heard from Rinderknecht's lawyer - and this Xweet might give a clue to how their thinking went...
There are like 30 eyewitness reports of fireworks in the area, and he called 911 repeatedly within SECONDS of the fire starting. Him being there is suspect, but it’s odd that he’d call for help immediately if he intended to do harm. The Feds have zero evidence indicating him igniting the fire, other than his phone being in the GAO at the time of ignition. The other bit of corroborating evidence is he searched for “are you liable if your cigarette accidentally starts a fire?”. While that definitely further points to him as the originator of the fire, it only indicates accidental ignition, not malicious intent. There’s really no other evidence, and the numerous reports of fireworks introduce a lot of reasonable doubt. It’s not a strong case.
...perhaps convinced them the feds couldn't prove it wasn't kids and fireworks, couldn't prove anything Rinderknecht did was meant to be malicious as opposed to accidental, the Lachman site was univestigated and unsecured for twelve days, and, as they weren't allowed to introduce anything from the Palisades fire, including what had happened with the firefighting crews, who's to say what evidence was lost.
It could be a tough go on Round Two if Essayli does decide to go for it.
I don't know if those poor people will ever see any type of justice or closure.
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