An upcoming criminal trial may reshape public opinion about the main cause of the 2025 Palisades Fire in Southern California, redefining it as a consequence not of climate change but of class warfare.
The fire killed 12 people, burned 23,707 acres, and destroyed 6,833 structures, according to Cal Fire, the state fire agency, which ranks the blaze as the third most destructive in the state’s history.
A status conference is scheduled for later this month, and a trial is set to begin October 19, 2026, in a criminal case against Jonathan Rinderknecht, who was indicted by a grand jury late last year on three charges, including arson, related to the fire. Rinderknecht pleaded not guilty. When jurors heard the case in June, it ended in a mistrial, prompting the retrial.
A memo by federal prosecutors in the case says, “On January 24, 2025, when investigators asked defendant why someone might commit arson in the Pacific Palisades, he responded that it would be out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as ‘we’re basically being enslaved by them.’” Rinderknecht had been working as a ride-share driver, and the memo says his passengers reported he had been ranting against capitalism and talking about Luigi Mangione, who is charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City in December 2024.
“On December 12 and 13, 2024, defendant searched the internet for Mangione-related news, using the search terms ‘free Luigi Mangione,’ ‘lets take down all the billionaires,’ and ‘reddit lets kill all the billionaires,’” the prosecution memo says.
In closing arguments in June, Assistant U.S. Attorney Danbee Kim told the jury that Rinderknecht “had a deeply entrenched belief that the wealthy were destroying the world,” according to an account by City News Service, a regional wire.
A court filing in the case by William Schry, a certified fire investigator and special agent of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, reports that “On July 11, 2024, RINDERKNECHT provided the following prompt to ChatGPT: ‘A dystopian painting divided into distinct parts that blend together seamlessly. On the far left, there is a burning forest. Next to it, a crowd of people is running away from the fire, leading to the middle. In the middle, hundreds of thousands of people in poverty are trying to get past a gigantic gate with a big dollar sign on it. On the other side of the gate and the entire wall is a conglomerate of the richest people. They are chilling, watching the world burn down, and watching the people struggle. They are laughing, enjoying themselves, and dancing.'”
To hear the Democratic politicians and most of the press tell it, the main cause of the 2025 fire was climate change. The Democratic presidential candidate in 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris, posted in February 2025, “In January, we saw historic damage in Altadena, Pacific Palisades, and throughout Los Angeles due to wildfires. These blazes — made worse by the climate crisis — devastated communities.”
The New York Times ran at least a half dozen pieces prominently tying the fires to the climate change issue. One front-page news article declared “climate change is supercharging disasters,” claiming “With temperatures rising around the globe and the oceans unusually warm, scientists are warning that the world has entered a dangerous new era of chaotic floods, storms and fires made worse by human-caused climate change. The firestorms ravaging the country’s second-largest city are just the latest spasm of extreme weather that is growing more furious as well as more unpredictable.” A subheadline featured the phrase “scientists say.” Another front-page Times news article relied on “fire experts” who said “climate change has made megafires more common and windstorms wilder.”
The Times opinion pages also weighed in with a piece about “climatic changes that seem to increase those risks almost year by year.” Another guest essay, headlined, “As a Climate Scientist, I Knew It Was Time to Leave Los Angeles,” asserted, “For those who have lost everything in climate disasters, the apocalypse has already arrived. And as the planet gets hotter, climate disasters will get more frequent and more intense.” One New York Times opinion piece, by veteran Los Angeles Times reporter Mark Arax, had the audacity to blame the fires on, of all people, Rupert Murdoch: “If only the climate change deniers peddling their pap on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News considered the last escapees from Coffey Park, a mundane suburban tract tucked behind a freeway in a corner of Sonoma County in Northern California. At 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 9, 2017, flames raced down the gully of an adjacent hillside, and a gust of fire roared toward them.”
There has been no such spate of Times opinion pieces blaming the California fires on left-wing television networks or opinion pages platforming wealth inequality handwringing by Senator Bernie Sanders, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or economics professors Piketty and Zucman.
It’s a good example of the press’s double standard. If the fire killing 12 people and causing tens of billions worth of property damage had been set, God forbid, by an immigrant-hating Trump supporter targeting a heavily Hispanic neighborhood, you would have never heard the end of how hateful political rhetoric has consequences. Yet when the target is rich people, the Left gets a total pass.
In addition to motives, the case turns on technical matters. The defense attribute the burn to New Year’s fireworks, while prosecutors say there were no fireworks in the area and linked it instead to Rinderknecht’s green Bic barbecue lighter. There’s also a debate over how responsible Rinderknecht, a U.S.-French dual national, is for the Palisades Fire if he started it indirectly, by causing the Lachman Fire that later, not fully extinguished, reignited into the Palisades Blaze.
Anyway, whatever your view is of climate change, consider keeping an eye on the upcoming trial before U.S. District Court Judge Anne Hwang, with a view toward potentially revising your view of the cause of the fire based on empirical facts. It may be that the more relevant explanatory framework is not climate change but deadly left-wing political violence, class warfare and resentment of the rich. The Ten Commandments warn against murder and also against envy.
Like many of those on the far-left, though, Rinderknecht apparently had contempt for scripture. ATF agent Schry reported that Rinderknecht wrote in an AI prompt: “I literally burnt the Bible that I had. It felt amazing. I felt so liberated.” Rinderknecht also wrote to a family member: “Burned the Bible I had literally.”
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