Jay Inslee's New Law Firm Role Draws Scrutiny + Clash Over Climate Change's Role in Spokane Fires

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: there is now a suspect in custody on suspicion of arson in the start of the old trails fire in spokane on saturday now authorities had previously detained him that very day because he was reported by people who saw him allegedly starting this fire they questioned him released him and then again nabbed him yesterday and now he's behind bars accused of arson and of course in fact if he could be tied to any of these other um you know fires there'll be additional charges and that'll be all played out in the days to come but in the monday night press conference we learned a lot more about this guy from spokane county sheriff john knowles who said his detectives arrested the 37 year old and turns out this guy was previously convicted of manslaughter in arizona and now is held on a million dollar bond so here's part of that monday evening press conference about 5 p.m this afternoon [00:01:10] Aaron Furnacci: we executed an arrest warrant and search warrant in the city of spokane and we took 37 year old aaron furnacci a convicted felon into custody on a single charge of arson in the first degree about three o'clock this afternoon a an arrest warrant affidavit and a search warrant affidavit were presented to judge zamblin she signed the arrest warrant and set a one million dollar bond on mr furnacci mr furnacci is currently in custody and being interviewed by detectives from our major crimes unit here in the spokane county sheriff's office [00:01:48] Speaker 1: nearly a thousand personnel are still fighting these fires in the spokane area zero containment as of the time of this recording 67 000 people forced to evacuate the majority of those people still not allowed back into their homes estimates from local officials on monday morning said that or a monday evening rather said that thousands of those people may not get to go back for quite some time there's dangers there they're watching out for looters they're asking people not to fly drones over the fire ravaged areas but again 700 structures roughly and the majority of those are homes that have been destroyed in these fires this is good news though as of today all 14 of the people that were unaccounted for as of monday have been found so these were among the roughly 300 people that called for help on saturday when everything was frantic and those level three evacuation notices went out there were 14 people that as of monday they had not been able to close the loop on and ensure that those people were safe and sound they've now done that so at this point there was zero loss of life and i have not even heard of any reports of injuries from folks evacuated i would guess that among the nearly thousand firefighting personnel there could well be folks that have been injured on the firefighting line but this is incredible that no loss of life and no serious injuries to citizens in this massive evacuation effort that happened on saturday and i did also chat today with representative jenny graham of spokane uh she lost her home she and her husband lost their home in the fires on saturday i caught up with her today she is in idaho staying with her daughter-in-law um and you spent the first night i guess or night or two in a hotel with her mom um so you know there are doesn't matter who you are when fire comes and everything is destroyed um this is the result one thing that she shared of note and i intend to follow up on this in the next few days is that state lawmakers because we are today's election day we're in election season they're not able to contact constituents and say how are you can i help what can i do here are resources and connections that i have and she said that was breaking her heart only because i reached out to her was she able to respond and say i can talk to you off the record and tell you here's the situation she is trying right now in earnest to get some sort of accommodations or sort of suspension of these election rules so that even though we're in an election season and she's not seeking re-election but the rules still apply to her um that they can contact constituents and be of some help to the people that they care about in their district so that is a story i intend to follow up on in the days to come this week now a law firm out of california that recently set up in spokane is already talking about trying to find out who to assign blame to the utilities did they cut power off in time should they have would that have helped at all and they're encouraging fire victims those who've lost their homes businesses to get in contact with them now this is singleton schreiber that's the name of the law firm now former governor jay ensley is now tied to this firm he was higher on with them to do some advocacy work so there are important connections here that deserve at least the light of day so um singleton schreiber put out this email blast to media and i got the email yesterday on monday saying hey you know make sure that you know you let your viewers your your readers know that we're here and they should be in contact with us if they need any help um they want to position themselves to potentially represent spokane fire victims and they offered up their attorneys for an interview um at this point obviously we've got an arsonist we have no idea if there's going to be other blame assigned folks that should be held accountable for these fires but of course you get the law firms that line up hoping that they can be in the middle of representing um victims so i spoke to rich barker with singleton schreiber in an interview on monday and i asked him i said okay so who really pays for these big settlements because in california which is where they're headquartered utility rate payers saw their bills go way up when they created this fire victims liability fund backed by this law firm who wanted that now this was tried here in washington state this legislative session a bill that was backed by democratic representative christine reeves of federal way didn't get past its initial um hearing in a committee but it would have established this victim's fund the law firm then gets to tap into the fund for these payouts so again i asked singleton schreiber attorney rich barker about that nobody wants their rates to go [00:07:44] Speaker 3: up and we completely understand that and it's really a question of whether you know corporate profits um or whether the corporations and utilities are gonna ensure that they keep rates low um while at the same time ensuring that they have coverage to pay for the catastrophic event that in some instances they cost right and making sure that they are taking responsibility for the things uh that happen to our communities for the devastating impacts of wildfires in our communities um you know we think that it's important that we put the customers and those who are victims and survivors of wildfires um over profits and it's it's essential that having a funded place like this uh especially for utilities like inland power and light or other smaller utilities that don't have large insurance policies that they're able to obtain this insurance on the back end i mean ultimately the state pays for it when there is a massive wildfire like this the suppression cost and other um costs associated with rebuilding from a wildfire the infrastructure cost as well so uh i would counter that notion that it's the plaintiff's lawyers that end up profiting off off of a fund like this it's the members of our community who are tragically impacted by wildfires who get the benefit of that we're really in early in any investigation whenever there is a catastrophic wildfire um our firm is is always proactively looking to identify who may be responsible and to investigate the cause and origin of that wildfire um in this particular case with respect to the therapy fire or the old trails fire the auburn fire um we're not uh at a point where we have enough information one way or the other um but we will continue to look into the cause and origin of those of those fires and when they are railroad caused or utility caused wildfires um those are instances where when when a utility when a big company when railroad uh does ignite a wildfire and it doesn't devastate the community um those are cases where we want to be proactive on behalf of the survivors of those those wildfires and try to help make them whole and to to bring them back as close as we can to where they they were we obviously can't bring back their lives and make it exactly as it was but it's also important to hold the corporations accountable so now here's the [00:10:09] Speaker 1: connection with former governor jay inslee because singleton schreiber enlisted inslee and mike webb who was a long time advisor to now governor bob ferguson to help move that legislation i referenced um again it didn't move past its initial public hearing um but in a september 17th 2025 opinion piece we had some comments here from governor inslee and we'll put this up it was posted in the spokesman review he said a wildfire victims fund is a practical multi-benefit solution it ensures economic justice for victims increases prevention efforts and utility accountability protects utilities against bankruptcy and improves access to affordable wildfire insurance all without pulling from the state general fund so again while it may not pull from the state general fund in the case of california rate payers were built for more than 10 billion dollars to pay into that fund so then the law firm could come and get that and dole it out to wildfire victims so i spoke this morning with gop chairman jim walsh about the inslee connection to this law firm and um you know when there's big fires in spokane this firm says we need a dedicated fund to drain from well chairman walsh had some very pointed comments [00:11:44] Speaker 4: for former governor inslee about that uh jay inslee is a grifter he is a shady ambulance chasing scumbag and this is what he was before he got in politics he was an ambulance chasing lawyer then out of politics now and he keeps trying to make it sound like he was going to run for president or become a cab than official he's not he he's out of politics he's reverted to his sleazy ambulance chasing ways from years ago before he was in politics inslee has aligned himself with a california-based law firm that runs a grifty racket this is what they do they're very politically engaged with the left wing with progressive politicians and they get states to create a taxpayer funded account with a new tax in these states uh that that is a so-called wildfire victims fund and it sounds sympathetic it sounds like something people want to help especially like right now in the wake of these fires really wrecking a lot of residential areas in and around spokane county um people want to help i mean they wanted what can i do i literally get calls from people and emails what can i do i want to help who could i give some money to what can i do to volunteer so people want to help and these ghouls these legal vampires take advantage of that impulse to help and they set up these taxes that fund these victims funds as they call them and then they the law firm that helped create the fund the the government money pile then sues the state or sues ngos and quasi government agencies or local governments the county the fire district whatever to get at the money in the account that they helped set up it is a complete grift i mean it's like a ponzi scheme it's like bernie madoff or carlo ponzi it's a it's a grift and insley is up to his sleazy ears and trying to set up this kind of scam here in washington state again important to note at this [00:14:11] Speaker 1: point there is no evidence that utilities in spokane avista or any others were negligent in fact i know that notices were going out to cut power in certain areas we do have an alleged arsonist um in custody and if in fact that fire sparked the others there's not going to be any evidence at this point that the utilities were to blame um and then we have of course had incredible wins that day um all across the state of washington so i would encourage you to check out my colleague tim clauser's article the center square washington page he has the very latest on uh the fire victims the numbers and as well as important links for folks who are looking to help now to spokane where favorable weather conditions are really helping firefighters get some initial containment at least on those three devastating fires uh according to incident command the very latest from them firefighters have gained a percentage a small percentage but a percentage of containment on all three and they have a fire line dug around all three of those fires they don't expect to see any crazy wind event like we had last weekend we do have a 37 year old man accused of starting the old trails fire that was the most devastating of the three fires he appeared before a judge yesterday for the first time since his arrest on monday evening he's held under a million dollars bail at this point there were three witnesses who reported seeing him in a suspicious location near euclid road and that's where that fire started they saw smoke just moments later they called police now police initially detained him and then released him apparently maybe even questioned him a couple more times before he was finally arrested on monday so um lots of questions about why this guy is even out right now but here's a little bit more uh a clip from television station kgw on this alleged arsonist kids are probably gonna have to go to counseling for [00:16:29] Speaker 5: for dealing with all that with ptsd like a daughter has anxiety man and to find out that like somebody started that like there's a lot of families a teacher that i work with right behind my house lost everything that he had including his pets and like to know that that all could have been avoided [00:16:46] Speaker 1: is heartbreaking man now this is going to be interesting too because court records reveal that this guy came under scrutiny from authorities in two other arson investigations for fires in the spokane area last summer so you can be certain they're going to be looking at that once again he was never charged in those cases only questioned and apparently never charged um the the sheriff um in spokane sheriff knolls did confirm in fact they've got all the court records from down in arizona where this guy was convicted of manslaughter and uh sent to prison for killing his own father he was 21 at the time shot and killed his father apparently already had some mental health issues and um ended up pleading guilty to manslaughter and was released then in 2020 not exactly sure how long he's been up in spokane um but again lots of uh lots of questions about the short prison sentence why he would have come to washington state upon his release but i want to go back to something that governor jay inslee former governor jay inslee said as these fires were still raging last weekend he posted on x a little video clip blaming climate change uh for the fires of course now we know it was not climate change that caused these fires it was an arsonist but i did want to check in with my favorite climate guy to get his take on all this so professor of atmospheric sciences at the university of washington cliff math i wanted to get his take on the fires the weather conditions that kind of got everything going last weekend and ask him if he thought in his opinion if climate change and global warming had anything to do with the fires or the fire spread that's a beautiful morning here in lopez island but [00:18:42] Speaker 6: i'm so concerned talked to my friend a legislator in spokane whose home was he had to evacuate because of these massive fires in spokane county the whole state's under threat now climate change you know climate change isn't some existential global thing it's our neighbors it's our friends we had to fight for [00:19:01] Speaker 1: him i also chatted yesterday with lands commissioner washington state lands commissioner dave up the grove he often cites global warming in his policies and how he approaches forest management we had a phone conversation he told me this in part we'll put this up he says the general consensus of scientists is the climate is impacting weather patterns and that can sometimes have localized weather impacts and so i do believe as our climate changes it creates new challenges in fighting some of these fires they started predominantly by humans it isn't climate change causing the fires it's the climate change affecting the health of the forest and it can affect weather conditions so that was part of what he had to say about all of that but he did indicate that he's doing a lot better with forest health and managing our forests and believes that we're taking a lot more proactive approach under his administration than under his predecessor and this is interesting when you asked google and i did this morning i said did climate change cause the spokane fires the ai generated response back from google said this said climate change did not directly ignite the spokane fires but it heavily supercharged the conditions that allowed them to explode into a catastrophic emergency climate change acts as a climate multiplier so that was the response when you ask google if the fires were caused by climate change so much more to come in the next couple of days we're getting new information about the fires and of course we're going to be following the very latest with the arsonist he's got another uh court appearance scheduled for thursday so so we'll have some more to share with you on episodes later this week