ASEANEWS HEADLINE-VP DU30 IMPEACHMENT 7.21.26 DAY #8 | MANILA: NBI CHIEF ON DUTERTE KILL THREAT | Persons of interest tagged in VP’s case
National Bureau of Investigation Director Melvin Matibag takes his oath as he testifies before the impeachment court trying Vice President Sara Duterte. (PRIB/Senate of the Philippines)
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WATCH VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAN26ZCqHGI
LIVE: Impeachment Trial of Vice President Sara Duterte | DAY 8 – July 21, 2026
.The historic Impeachment Trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, day 8, July 21, 2026.
🔴 What are the charges against VP Sara Duterte? The House of Representatives transmitted four major Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, which include:
1. Assassination Threats: Public death threats directed against President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and former Speaker Martin Romualdez.
2. Unexplained Wealth: Alleged failure to truthfully disclose assets in her SALN from 2022 to 2024.
3. Bribery: Alleged procurement and bribery irregularities involving DepEd officials.
4. Misuse of Public Funds: Alleged irregularities surrounding ₱612.5 million in confidential and intelligence funds under the OVP and DepEd.
STAY AHEAD OF HISTORY!
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THE National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has established “persons of interest” and is pursuing leads in its continuing investigation into Vice President Sara Duterte’s threats against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and the members of his family, Director Melvin Matibag said Tuesday.
Testifying during the eighth day of Duterte’s impeachment trial, Matibag said these “persons of interest” could lead to the individual Duterte allegedly spoke with to carry out a plan to kill Marcos, first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and former speaker Martin Romualdez.
However, the NBI chief refused to identify them publicly, saying premature disclosure could compromise the investigation, endanger informants, expose confidential intelligence reports and weaken the agency’s ability to conduct a successful operation.
“At present, the investigation being conducted by the task force regarding the threat against the president remains active and ongoing. We are pursuing leads and have, in fact, identified persons of interest who could point to or help identify the individual the vice president spoke with — or one of these persons of interest might actually be the very person the vice president talked with,” Matibag said.
The investigation seeks to identify the person Duterte contracted to kill the president and members of his family.
National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) director Melvin Matibag
Matibag did not state how many persons of interest had been identified.
He clarified that the designation did not mean the NBI had conclusively determined which person, if any, was Duterte’s alleged contact.
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Matibag said identifying the alleged contact was expressly included in the mandate of the special task force formed by the NBI.
The NBI chief also said the bureau’s Cybercrime Division had monitored social-media comments and videos containing references to shooting the president and sending a bullet to his head. He said these contributed to the bureau’s concern for the president’s safety and national security.
When lead prosecutor Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro asked what law Duterte had violated in connection with the alleged threat, Presiding Officer Francis Escudero sustained the defense’s objection, saying the question called for a legal conclusion while the investigation remained ongoing. Luistro then ended her direct examination.
Before leaving the witness stand, Matibag showed the court documents that he described as task-force reports, meeting minutes and internal reports.
He confirmed that information concerning the persons of interest was included in the documents.
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‘Kinetic force’
Also on Tuesday, Matibag warned the nation of what he described as the “kinetic force” impact of Duterte’s assassination threats against the president on her supporters.
He told the Senate impeachment court that followers of the vice president and of the Duterte family have been repeating and spreading the assassination declarations she made in an online news conference on Nov. 23, 2024.
This was what prompted him to create a special task force to look into what he called the “serious, active and continuing” threat on the life of President Marcos, he said.
Asked by Luistro what he meant by “kinetic force,” Matibag said the vice president’s statements are having an effect on her supporters for them to spread chaos and disrespect for law and order.
The NBI chief cited the RAGE Coalition rally held in Cebu in May, where Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte called for the head of President Marcos.
Matibag said the live broadcast of the event was heard by about 691,000.
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He said that among the rally participants were some senators, former Quezon City congressman Mike Defensor and his party-mates in PDP-Laban when he was its member.
“That is where what I call ‘kinetic force’ comes into play — potentially triggering a negative reaction from the onlookers and disrupting our efforts to promote law and order,” Matibag said.
Matibag said the NBI’s special task force assessed the alleged threats of Duterte using five factors: pattern of violence, gravity or seriousness, identity, capacity, and motive or intent.
On gravity and seriousness, he said the task force considered the positions of those allegedly threatened: the president, first lady and Romualdez.
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Matibag said investigators also considered Duterte’s repeated insistence during her Nov. 23, 2024 online news conference that she was not joking.
The task force reviewed that news conference together with Duterte’s public statements on Oct. 18 and Nov. 26, 2024.
Matibag said the later statement reinforced the NBI’s assessment that Duterte had indeed spoken with someone who purportedly agreed to kill the president.
Escudero allowed that answer to remain part of Matibag’s narration but instructed the senator-judges not to treat it as a conclusion of law.
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On identity, Matibag said the NBI considered the source established because Duterte had publicly made and subsequently acknowledged the statements.
On capacity, investigators considered what Matibag described as Duterte’s network and her father’s tenure as president.
Matibag also referred generally to news reports about the Duterte family’s alleged firearms holdings and to what he described as their financial connections.
On motive and intent, the NBI chief pointed to the constitutional line of succession should the president die.
Matibag also cited the possible disruption of government and threats the NBI was monitoring on social media.
“It’s creating chaos — those who have caused chaos, one after another, criticizing the government. And those ordinary citizens, as we will see, continue to threaten the [p]resident. In fact, we are monitoring a lot of threats on social media,” he said.
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National security threat
Matibag said the NBI’s special task force he created is important because they considered a threat to the president’s life a national security threat.
“From our law enforcement perspective, we now consider the threat made by the vice president not as a threat but as a plan to kill our president, and that is a threat to the president which we also consider a threat to our national security,” Matibag said.
“We established a special task force through an administrative order, designating members from our office to continue this investigation and monitor the necessary actions,” Matibag said.
Explaining what prompted the task force’s creation, Matibag cited the vice president’s public statements and an April 12 broadcast of a RAGE Coalition rally.
He said their work included continuing surveillance, monitoring threats transmitted through social media, coordinating with foreign counterparts and conducting technical examinations of evidence.
For the NBI, Matibag said, the potential consequences of a threat against the country’s highest official extend to the government and the nation.
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“Any threat to our president is a threat to our country’s security, as it would cause chaos, unrest, and the destabilization of our government and nation,” he said.
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‘Scrap of paper’
The defense panel for the vice president assailed the prosecution’s use of a document attributed to confessed Davao Death Squad hitman Arturo Lascañas, calling it “a mere scrap of paper” because it was unsigned and was not notarized.
In his statement, Lascañas said Duterte, while mayor of Davao, had ordered killers not to shoot drug suspects to avoid media attention, but to abduct them instead and bury them so that they would be considered “missing.” Defense counsel Mark Vinluan objected to the presentation of the document through Matibag, arguing that the prosecution could not allow its witness to build his testimony on a document that lacked both a valid signature and notarization.
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After Senate Presiding Officer Francis Escudero asked whether the pre-marked document was notarized, prosecutor Gerville Luistro admitted that it was not, prompting Escudero to clarify that it was “not even an affidavit but merely a statement” because it was neither subscribed nor made under oath.
Matibag explained that law enforcement agencies use such documents as open-source intelligence to generate leads, saying the Lascañas document formed part of an open, continuing and active investigation and was valuable in directing investigators toward evidence that still needed to be verified.
He also said the original statement was with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is trying former president Rodrigo Duterte for crimes against humanity for his bloody war on drugs.
Escudero then clarified for the senator-judges that the document was being identified only to establish that it had been used during the NBI’s investigation and not to prove the truth of the allegations it contained.
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By Catherine S. Valente , Javier Joe Ismael and James Daniel Danio
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