Philippine VP Sara Duterte faces criminal charges over alleged Marcos assassination threat
Vice President Sara Duterte has been charged with grave threats following allegations she ordered an assassination plot against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife, and a former congressman. The charge comes amid her ongoing Senate impeachment trial.
Criminal charges filed amid impeachment proceedings
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte was charged Tuesday with grave threats over alleged death threats against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., adding a criminal dimension to her historic impeachment trial.
Department of Justice spokesman Polo Martinez confirmed the charge was filed Tuesday afternoon in a Quezon City courtroom. The case stems from a National Bureau of Investigation criminal complaint filed in February 2025, months after authenticated video from a November 23, 2024 online press conference showed Duterte stating: "If I get killed, you kill BBM, Liza Araneta, and Martin Romualdez. No joke. I gave my orders."
The charges arise from remarks Duterte made during a late-night news briefing in which she claimed to have hired an assassin to kill Marcos, his wife, and former congressman Martin Romualdez should she be harmed first. The National Bureau of Investigation authenticated the video footage, confirming it showed no signs of editing.
Legal battles on two fronts
Defence lawyer Paul Lawrence Lim argued the criminal prosecution cannot proceed while his client faces impeachment. "As a sitting impeachable officer, the Vice President may not be prosecuted for an alleged offense that is also the subject of an impeachment case," Lim said in a statement.
Martinez confirmed the justice department believes both cases can proceed simultaneously, adding prosecutors had met a "high threshold" before moving forward. Professor Dante Gatmaytan of the University of the Philippines College of Law told reporters there was nothing unconstitutional about pursuing the cases independently.
Under Article 282 of the Philippine Revised Penal Code, a conviction on grave threats charges carries a jail term of between one and six months. An additional complaint of inciting to sedition included in the original NBI complaint was dismissed.
Historic impeachment proceedings
Duterte became the first vice president in Philippine history to be impeached when the House of Representatives initially voted to impeach her on February 5, 2025. She made history again as the first to be impeached twice when the House voted 257-25 on May 11, 2026, with 9 abstentions, far exceeding the one-third threshold required under the Philippine Constitution.
Tuesday marked Day 14 of Senate impeachment proceedings that commenced on July 6, 2026. The Senate has approved 92 trial days for the case. A guilty verdict requires a two-thirds vote of all 24 senators—meaning at least 16 votes are needed to convict Duterte and remove her from office, which would permanently bar her from elective politics and derail her planned 2028 presidential run.
Beyond the assassination threat allegations, the impeachment case includes charges related to alleged misuse of P612.5 million in confidential funds during her tenure as Secretary of the Department of Education from 2022 to 2024, comprising P500 million from the Office of the Vice President and P112.5 million from the education department.
Political alliance turned bitter feud
The daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, who served from 2016 to 2022, Sara Duterte and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ran together on a joint ticket and won the 2022 presidential election by a landslide. The two political heirs to powerful dynasties have since seen their alliance collapse into an increasingly bitter feud.
The criminal case now running parallel to the impeachment trial represents an unprecedented situation in Philippine political history, with a sitting vice president facing both removal from office and potential criminal conviction simultaneously.
