Spencer Pratt called out Gavin Newsom following the news that authorities had arrested and charged Jonathan Rinderknecht in connection to January’s Palisades fire.
Pratt and Heidi Montag lost their home in the January fires and filed a lawsuit shortly after, alleging that the city’s water supply system failed its residents. In a video he posted to X Wednesday, Pratt said the news surrounding Rinderknecht’s arrest only strengthens their case.
“Gavin Newsom desperately wants you to move on from the Palisades fire,” Pratt said. “He’s so desperate he doesn’t realize that today’s arson arrest proved the foundational point of our lawsuit against Newsom and the state of California. Today’s arrest proves that Newsom’s Topanga State Park allowed a fire to smolder for a week without doing anything to mitigate it. This is exactly what we alleged in our lawsuit and he’s so dumb he doesn’t realize that this helps us sue him.”
He continued: “I think the hair gel is getting to his braincells. He says this brings closure to the victims because he wants you to stop talking about the fire that is on his hands. This ain’t closure pal, it’s just the beginning. Thank you to the DOJ and the ATF for finally releasing the evidence that proves our lawsuit against Gavin Newsom is on point.”
Rinderknecht, a 29-year-old Uber driver was arrested and charged Wednesday with arson in connection to the Palisades Fire that killed 12 people and burned more than 23,000 acres in January. Rinderknecht was a Palisades resident who relocated to Florida after the fires. Officials say that Rinderknecht planned the devastation, in part, using ChatGPT, generating images of a burning city using the OpenAI application.
“He was an Uber driver, connected to drop someone off,” U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli said Wednesday. “He was in this neighborhood — this is New Year’s Eve, so it was around midnight — and he went up to this hilltop, and at some point up there, around 12:12 a.m., he ignited a fire.”
That initial fire was allegedly lit near the “Hidden Buddha” clearing off the Palisades’ Skull Rock Trail. Called the Lachman Fire, it was extinguished by fire department officials on Jan. 1 but continued to smolder underground until the Santa Ana winds reignited the blaze on Jan. 7.
“The Hills” stars banded together with more than 20 other Pacific Palisades residents back in January to sue the city of Los Angeles and its Department of Water and Power over damage caused by the Palisades fire.
“On information and belief, the Palisades Fire was an inescapable and
unavoidable consequence of the water supply system servicing areas in and around Pacific Palisades as it was planned and constructed,” the lawsuit read. “The system necessarily failed, and this failure was a substantial factor in causing Plaintiffs to suffer the losses alleged in this Complaint.”
