Philippine VP Sara Duterte Posts Bail on Charges She Threatened to Have Marcos Assassinated

A Philippine court in Quezon City issued a warrant Friday, September 4, for the arrest of Vice President Sara Duterte on three counts of grave threats. She posted bail the next day and walked out of the Regional Trial Court in Metro Manila, according to the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Malay Mail.

Duterte, 48, paid 360,000 pesos, about $5,740, covering 120,000 pesos for each of the three counts, according to TIME. Court staff took her fingerprints. Her attorney, Paul Lawrence Lim, said in a statement that "she has no intention of evading the law and will continue to exercise all her legal remedies."

The case traces to a virtual press conference in November 2024. According to TIME's translation of her remarks, Duterte said: "I already talked to someone. I told him, if I'm killed, kill Marcos, Liza Araneta, and Martin Romualdez. No joke, no joke. I already gave orders. If I die, I told them, don't stop until they're dead. And then he said, yes."

The three named targets are President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and Martin Romualdez, who was House Speaker at the time and is Marcos's cousin. Breitbart's coverage adds context the wire reports leave out: weeks before the assassination remark, Duterte had also said she wanted to "cut his head off" and threatened to dig up the corpse of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and "throw it in the West Philippine Sea." Marcos's administration didn't act on those comments, according to Breitbart, but treated the hitman claim differently and beefed up the president's security detail.

Duterte has since said the remarks were taken out of context and that she was expressing fear for her own safety, not making a threat, according to the Associated Press.

The criminal case is separate from, but tangled up with, Duterte's impeachment. The House of Representatives, which Marcos allies control, voted to impeach her in May over the assassination remarks plus allegations of unexplained wealth and misuse of confidential state funds, according to the AP. The Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, opened her televised trial in July.

Malay Mail reported that justice officials have taken the position she can be prosecuted criminally while the impeachment trial proceeds, despite arguments from her legal team. If the Senate convicts her, she'd be removed from office and barred from seeking the presidency in 2028, when Marcos's single six-year term ends. A criminal conviction on the grave-threats charges carries the same disqualification risk, according to the AP.

Duterte and Marcos ran together in 2022, uniting two of the country's biggest political families. Breitbart notes the alliance collapsed over China policy, with Marcos pursuing closer U.S. ties and Duterte leaning toward Beijing, plus disputes over constitutional reform and Mindanao autonomy. The first lady's public disdain for the Dutertes has made the rift personal as well as political, per Breitbart.

Sara Duterte is the daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, who was arrested in 2025 on an International Criminal Court warrant and remains in custody at The Hague awaiting trial over deaths tied to his anti-drug campaign, according to the AP and NPR. Despite that, and despite the charges against his daughter, recent surveys cited by TIME show Sara Duterte as Filipinos' top preferred candidate to succeed Marcos.

Jean Encinas-Franco, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines, told TIME the arrest warrant means "the law has finally caught up with the Vice President," but questioned its timing, suggesting it could help Marcos counter criticism that he's been a weak leader while the impeachment trial has dragged on. Franco also said it's unclear which side actually benefits politically. That's a fair question the reporting doesn't resolve. No source in this record shows the warrant was timed for political effect rather than simply following the normal pace of a criminal investigation opened in 2024. It's a real open question, not an established fact either way.

Duterte, for her part, told reporters outside the courthouse she doesn't feel safe with police at her home, saying they've been "harassing" her since 2023, and asked journalists to accompany her to her car. She showed reporters a court order lifting the warrant once bail was posted, saying her lawyers told her to keep it on hand.

The Senate impeachment trial continues, and no verdict has been announced. The criminal case on the grave-threats charges will proceed separately in Quezon City. Whether a court finds Duterte's 2024 remarks constituted an actual threat or an expression of fear, as she claims, remains unresolved. Her ability to run in 2028 depends on the outcome of both proceedings, and neither has concluded.