THE House prosecution on Tuesday opened its presentation of evidence with testimony from a National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) cybercrime investigator who authenticated a video supporting the impeachment charge that Vice President Sara Z. Duterte made grave threats to have the country’s top officials killed.
NBI Senior Agent John Mark Calilung told the Senate sitting as an impeachment court that he served as the “agent on case” in the bureau’s investigation into Duterte’s Nov. 23, 2024 online livestream.
Calilung said his role was to gather evidence for the investigation into Duterte’s threats against President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and former Speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez.
“It means that I viewed, identified, preserved, collected, and authenticated digital evidence in the course of the investigation,” Calilung said during direct examination by lawyer Amando Virgil Ligutan, a counsel for the House prosecutors.
Among the evidence gathered by the NBI was the video of Duterte’s Nov. 23 online press briefing livestreamed on the Facebook page of former presidential spokesperson Harry Roque.
Calilung testified that he authenticated the recording by comparing a screen-recorded copy with the original livestream.
“After screen recording, there’s an output video. I compared the output video with the November 23, 2024 video and ensured that the contents are identical,” he said.
The NBI agent said he then generated a hash value to preserve the integrity of the recording.
“After ensuring that the contents are identical, I generated a hash value calculation on the video to ensure that the video won’t be tampered until presented in court,” he said.
After Calilung identified the relevant timestamp, prosecutors played the authenticated portion of the recording before the impeachment court.
In the video, Duterte said: “Huwag kang mag-alala, ma’am, sa security ko, kasi may kinausap na ako na tao. Sinabi ko sa kanya, kapag pinatay ako, patayin mo si BBM, si Liza Araneta, at si Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke. Nagbilin na ako, ma’am, ’pag namatay ako, sabi ko, huwag ka tumigil, ha, hanggang ‘di mo mapatay sila. And then he said yes.”
Calilung testified that investigators focused on that statement, which he identified as appearing between the 1-hour, 15-minute mark and the 1-hour, 17-minute, 18-second mark of the more than two-hour recording.
He said the NBI also submitted a preservation request to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, to preserve the recording and later executed an Affidavit of Authentication of Digital Evidence documenting the forensic process.
Calilung further testified that the NBI conducted an open-source investigation to determine whether Duterte had made similar statements before the Nov. 23 briefing.
Investigators identified an Oct. 18, 2024 online press conference in which Duterte made remarks directed at President Marcos, including statements about imagining cutting off his head, criticizing his leadership and threatening to exhume the remains of the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. and throw them into the West Philippine Sea.
The prosecution presented the earlier recording to place Duterte’s Nov. 23 remarks in context, saying both videos support Article IV of the Articles of Impeachment, which accuses Duterte of culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust over alleged grave threats.
The Nov. 23 livestream took place while Duterte was outside the House detention facility where her chief of staff, Atty. Zuleika Lopez, was being held after being cited in contempt by the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability during its inquiry into the Office of the Vice President’s use of confidential funds.
As House officials prepared to transfer Lopez to the Correctional Institution for Women, Duterte addressed reporters through the livestream that later became the subject of the NBI investigation.
With Calilung’s testimony, the prosecution laid the evidentiary foundation for the presentation of additional witnesses and documentary evidence on the fourth Article of Impeachment.
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