A fair warning to anyone unfortunate enough to want iconoclast Antonio Trillanes IV to do a hit job for them — despite the noise he is capable of creating, he has zero credibility.

His expertise lies in the manufacture of forged evidence, which he then constantly publicizes to make it believable through his tentacles in the media.

On several occasions, he has been proven to have produced fake documents, including the bank ledgers that he recycled and presented during the House Quad Committee (Quadcomm) inquisition of former President Rodrigo Duterte.

Trillanes admitted that his presentation at the House hearing came from 2016 bank account records. These were the same records he presented during the 2016 election campaign that were dismissed by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) and the source banks for being fictitious.

Trillanes claimed during the recent Quadcomm grilling of Duterte that more than P2 billion was stashed in then-candidate Duterte’s bank accounts. However, these records were proven to be part of a smear operation involving a then-deputy Ombudsman, who waved the forgeries, allegedly belonging to Duterte, passing them off as genuine bank transactions coming from the AMLC — a blatant lie.

These records were even confirmed as “genuine” by then-Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, who was known for her selective brand of justice, to support her deputy’s claim, which the AMLC later denied.

The most memorable of Trillanes’s hoaxes was the draft of a supposed framework agreement on joint maritime oil and gas exploration with China, which he used to try to humiliate Duterte during the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2018.

Saying that the “Chinese draft” had come from an informant, Trillanes, who was still a senator after a disastrous run for vice president, claimed the documents proved a sellout of our sovereignty.

Trillanes frequently claims to obtain materials from an informant, but most of the documents are later proven to be fake.

The draft framework agreement supposedly showed that a joint maritime oil and gas exploration agreement had been sealed between the People’s Republic of China and the Philippines on 21 October, 2016, and on 16 November, 2017. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) on energy cooperation was also supposedly signed between the energy departments of both countries on 15 May, 2017.

The draft stated that the exploration would not affect the respective positions on sovereignty and maritime rights and interests of the two parties.

At the time, Trillanes was also pressuring the Senate to investigate Duterte.

Then-Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. dismissed the Trillanes joint oil exploration “draft” as likely concocted. Locsin showed a copy of the authentic memorandum of understanding (MoU) and said he had written the document, which had been approved by the Chinese.

“When I wrote this draft, I did it myself. There’s supposed to be a Chinese draft, but the one Trillanes issued is not it,” Locsin said.

Locsin added that the “Chinese draft” leaked by Trillanes looked very different from the Chinese draft shown to him.

“There was a Chinese proposal, but it’s (the one leaked by Trillanes) not it — not at all,” Locsin said.

The MoU was entitled “Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation on Oil and Gas Development between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of the Philippines.” On the other hand, the document leaked by Trillanes was entitled “Framework Agreement on Joint Maritime Oil and Gas Exploration between China and the Philippines.”

The authentic document only contained an agreement between the Philippines and China to uphold the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Declaration of Conduct of Parties among claimant countries regarding the territorial conflict.

“It’s with full awareness of the limitations put on what states can and cannot do in the area. And the basic principle is, of course, mutual respect, fairness, mutual benefit, flexibility, and pragmatism,” Locsin said.

Trillanes’ track record has been all about undermining governments, which is something those employing his services should consider carefully.

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