Palisades fire suspect appears at evidentiary hearing ahead of trial

Attorneys for Rinderknecht requested that Hwang permit the defense team to introduce as evidence a previous case involving ATF Special Agent Matthew Beals, one of the investigators in the current case against Rinderknecht.

Beals was the lead ATF agent in the arson investigation of Navy Seaman Ryan Mays, who was accused of igniting a 2020 fire aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego, California. A military court acquitted Mays of all charges after a two-week trial.

“This prior investigation, prosecution, and acquittal bear extraordinary and unmistakable similarities to the investigation Agent Beals has conducted against Mr. Rinderknecht in the present case and, critically, reveals a pattern, motive, and systematic bias that is directly relevant to the jury’s assessment of Agent Beals’ credibility, methodology, and conclusions in this case,” Rinderknecht’s lawyers claimed.

The defense said the investigator in both cases “constructed a motive theory premised on a young, discontented man striking out against institutional authority,” while the resulting prosecution of the suspect served to “deflect scrutiny from the institutional failures of a government agency: the United States Navy in Mays, and the Los Angeles Fire Department and California State Parks in this case.”

“This motive theory was eerily identical to the profile the government now deploys against Jonathan Rinderknecht in this case,” the defense asserted, suggesting that he is being used as a scapegoat for the Los Angeles Police Department’s failures to fully extinguish the blaze.

According to the prosecution, witnesses reported that Rinderknecht, an Uber driver, was ranting to passengers on New Year’s Eve about vigilante violence, capitalism, and alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione.

In an interview with investigators, when asked why someone might commit arson in the affluent Pacific Palisades area, Rinderknecht allegedly responded that “it would be out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as ‘we’re basically being enslaved by them’ and compared such an act of ‘desperation’ to the murder for which Mangione was charged.”

Court documents say Rinderknecht admired Mangione and sought out online content on “kill[ing] all the billionaires” in the weeks leading up to the Palisades fire.

Hwang also heard the defense’s request to exclude the testimony of government expert Dr. Kevin Kelm, a behavioral analyst known for identifying potential motives in arson cases. Kelm would not testify directly about Rinderknecht, but rather about whether the circumstances surrounding the case fit into the behavioral profile of an arsonist.

Rinderknecht’s attorneys additionally asked that Hwang allow them to take video deposition of an alleged eyewitness, Ari Sallus, who has relocated to the United Kingdom to attend veterinary school.

“Mr. Sallus is not a fugitive, a target, or a reluctant participant in a scheme,” the defense told Hwang. “He is a critical exculpatory witness whose geographic relocation — for reasons entirely unrelated to this prosecution — threatens to deprive the defendant of testimony that lies at the heart of the defense case.”

Rinderknecht’s lawyers say Sallus photographed the Lachman fire, an initial brush fire believed to have become the larger Palisades fire, just after midnight on Jan. 1, 2025.

His testimony, if permitted, would anchor the defense’s theory that the Lachman fire was sparked by fireworks, not Rinderknecht. According to the defense, Sallus intends to testify that he heard a loud bang similar to a mortar blast in the immediate area of the fire’s origin, saw a flash of light, and took a photograph of the first-known ignition of the Lachman fire.

Sallus, however, cannot attend the jury trial in June because his enrollment in veterinary school abroad “makes transatlantic travel during the trial window academically impossible,” the defense argued.

The government, meanwhile, asked Hwang to bar the defense from calling on three experts who would raise doubts about the accuracy of geolocation data extracted from Rinderknecht’s cellphone and the arson investigation itself.

Federal prosecutors said that one of the defense’s experts, a retired arson detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, has “no firefighting expertise whatsoever, rendering him unqualified to offer his opinions about the LAFD’s response.”

Jury selection is slated to start on June 9 in United States v. Rinderknecht. The charges carry a statutory maximum sentence of 45 years in federal prison.