De Lima on VP Duterte impeachment case: Smoking guns galore
Published Mar 2, 2026 06:19 pm
At A Glance
- The congresswoman who endorsed two of the original four impeachment complaints against Vice President Sara Duterte disagrees with the claim that there is no "smoking gun" in the case against the latter.
Mamamayang Liberal (ML) Party-list Rep. Leila de Lima (left), Vice President Sara Duterte (Facebook, PPAB)
The congresswoman who endorsed two of the original four impeachment complaints against Vice President Sara Duterte disagrees with the claim that there is no "smoking gun" in the case against the latter.
In fact, Mamamayang Liberal (ML) Party-list Rep. Leila de Lima told the House Committee on Justice during its hearing Monday, March 2 that she found several.
“I beg to disagree [that there is no smoking gun). The video containing the Vice President's threat to kill the President, the First Lady and then House Speaker, as well as the media interview where she affirmed it is a smoking gun," De Lima said in her speech as an impeachment complaint endorser.
"The numerous documents evidencing payments or the debts with fictitious names are smoking guns,” she added.
De Lima was referring to the millions in disbursements of confidential and intelligence funds to persons who could not be located and who had no records in the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) database.
The two particular allegations that De Lima referred to were included in the 2025 impeachment case against Duterte, which the members of the previous 19th Congress found strong enough to transmit directly to the Senate.
It just so happened that the senators failed to immediately hold an impeachment trial against the Vice President, and the Supreme Court (SC) subsequently dismissed the 2025 case over a mere technicality.
Out of the four impeachment complaints that were referred to the justice panel for this year’s proceedings, De Lima endorsed the second and third complaints.
However, the filers of the second complaint opted to withdraw at the start of Monday's hearing, so they may support the third complaint, also known as the Father Joel Saballa, et al complaint.
Meanwhile, the first complaint was set aside by panel after the conduct of a vote. The third complaint, along with the fourth and last complaint known as the Nathaniel Cabrera complaint, "survived" the hearing after they were deemed sufficient in form.
“Saballa et al.'s complaint is replete with many other documentary evidence which are also smoking guns. And even assuming…that the evidence in the articles are not or no longer smoking guns, we have them this time," De Lima said.
"We will produce them in the form of compelling testimonies and newly discovered material evidence,” reckoned the former senator.
As if to hammer home her point, De Lima underscored that basically "nothing changed" between last year and this year in terms of the potency of the allegations.
"These are exactly, the same accusations and evidence that caused the Vice President's impeachment last year. Nothing changed. The grounds, the facts and the evidence remained valid. This should still be enough to impeach her this time,” she said.