Senior NBI Agent Jeremy Lotoc Courtesy: House of Representatives
THE National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Wednesday confirmed that Vice President Sara Duterte had contacted an assassin to carry out her threat to kill President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
Senior NBI Agent Jeremy Lotoc made the confirmation in answer to questions raised by Akbayan Rep. Chel Diokno in the course of the House Committee on Justice impeachment hearing.
This afternoon’s hearing focused on the November 2024 televised assassination threats made by the Vice President against President Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos and then Speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez.
The committee played the video of VP Duterte’s meltdown in a widely circulated news conference.
Lotoc was part of a four-member NBI team that investigated the threats.
Diokno asked him if if it was true, as stated by the Vice President in her video, that she had talked to an unidentified person who would assassinate the President, First Lady and Romualdez if she herself was killed, and that the individual said “yes.”
“Ongoing pa po ang aming imbestigasyon, pero may nakausap, may assassin po,” Lotoc said.
He also informed Diokno and the committee on Justice that his team had subpoenaed VP Duterte twice in relation to their investigation, but that the Vice President did not show up because she had to attend to “office matters” in connection with ongoing hearings in the House of Representatives.
He said in the second letter to the NBI sent by the Vice President’s lawyers, they denied that she had threatened the President, First Lady and then Speaker Romualdez.
He also said they subpoenaed six media personnel who attended the Vice President’s online press conference.
“They also expressed surprise and shock over what they heard,” he said.
Lotoc and other members of his team likewise confirmed that they had recommended the filing of one count of inciting to sedition and three counts of grave threats against VP Duterte.
Lotoc said the case is still pending with the Department of Justice.
NBI Director Melvin Matibag said described the threat against the President as “serious.”
“Any threat against the President, and for that matter against any official, we take is seriously. And we investigate,” he told the committee.
Mamamayang Liberal Party-list Rep. Leila de Lima, an endorser of the Saballa et al impeachment complaint, said for her, VP Duterte’s videotaped threats “are one of the most serious, if not the most serious, grounds for impeaching her.”
“Yes, all grounds are serious, but this one gives us an insight into the character of the Vice President. Never before has a Vice President threatened a sitting President,” she said.
She said VP Duterte was capable to making good on her assassination threat.
“The Dutertes have a history of and proclivity for violence,” De Lima, who was jailed for six years under the administration of former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte on drug charges which were eventually dismissed, said.
She added that she was not a psychologist but that she saw the Vice President as having been “cut from the same cloth and woven from the same fabric as her father.”
