A 29-year-old Biden-supporting Uber driver obsessed with dystopian imagery, "despair and bitterness" is charged with "maliciously" sparking the Palisades Fire, authorities said Wednesday -- nine months after the most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles history erupted.
Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, is accused of setting a brush fire Jan. 1 that was put out, but then smoldered unnoticed underground for days before igniting the raging Palisades inferno, which left 12 people dead and caused about $150 billion in damages.
BREAKING: Federal investigators say the man responsible for the catastrophic Palisades fire, Jonathan Rinderknecht, asked Chat GPT last July to create this “dystopian” image that shows a forest burning on the left and people running from it. In the middle, people in “poverty.”… pic.twitter.com/8VKCFn6d48
— Matt Finn (@MattFinnFNC) October 8, 2025The Palisades blaze, which was sparked by the Lachman Fire, went on to level more than 6,000 homes and buildings in the wealthy coastal enclave.
Rinderknecht, who lived in the area at some point, allegedly ignited the flames near a popular hiking trail in the hillside of a state park overlooking the neighborhood at about 12:12 a.m. on New Year's Day -- just moments after dropping off his Uber passengers.
The passengers later recalled Rinderknecht appearing "agitated and angry," the feds said.
After arriving at the hiking trail, Rinderknecht allegedly filmed the scene on his phone and listened to the rap song "Un Zder, Un The," by French artist Josman, whose music video features him setting a series of blazes, the criminal complaint states.
Google records showed that Rinderknecht, born in France, had listened to the song nine times and watched the music video four times in the days leading up to the fire, according to court papers.
Rinderknecht is believed to have watched his fire burn for about a minute before fleeing down the hiking trail, where he made a three-minute video recording of himself attempting to call 911 several times to report the blaze.
As he was on the phone to dispatchers, he typed "Are you at fault if a fire is lift [sic] because of your cigarettes" into ChatGPT -- which was also captured in the screen recording, the complaint charges.
Rinderknecht allegedly drove away from the scene but turned around to follow the responding fire trucks back to the scene -- where he then watched and recorded several videos as crews battled the inferno, according to the complaint.
"Based on my training and experience, arsonists sometimes call 911 to report the fires they have set, and arsonists sometimes like to watch firefighters respond to the fires that they have set," an investigator notes in the charging docs.
The videos were among a trove of evidence discovered on Rinderknecht's phone in the aftermath of the wildfire, authorities said.
Months before the blaze, in July, Rinderknecht had ChatGPT-generated a grim "dystopian" image of a burning city, according to the criminal complaint.
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