The criminal charges set to be filed against House Speaker Martin Romualdez and other House leaders are a “feeble attempt” to discredit the chamber amid the looming impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, administration allies said Sunday.

Deputy Majority Leader Paolo Ortega V and Assistant Majority Leader Jefferson Khonghun, both vocal critics of Duterte, described the move as “politically motivated,” aimed at undermining the House leadership after its overwhelming 215-member vote to impeach the VP on Wednesday.

"The [cases they will file] are baseless, another fantasy and fiction. Its obvious purpose is to divert public attention from the real issue — the impeachment trial of VP Duterte," Ortega said in Filipino. "They should not use Speaker Romualdez as a cover to escape responsibility.”

Duterte allies, including former Speaker and now Davao Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez, along with lawyers Jimmy Bondoc, Raul Lambino, and Ferdinand Topacio of PDP-Laban, and the Citizen Crime Watch NGO, are expected to file a falsification case on 5 February over alleged irregularities in the bicameral conference committee report on the 2025 national budget.

The respondents include Romualdez, House Majority Leader Manuel Jose "Mannix" Dalipe, and former House appropriations committee chair Elizaldy Co, among others. The complainants accuse them of being responsible for blank items in the bicam report, which were later filled with a P241 billion allocation — an act they claim was an illegal insertion after the report’s ratification.

"The correct thing to have done was to keep the blanks left as blanks, because this is what Congress ratified, but, instead, they did the exact opposite. They illegally inserted amounts worth P241 billion. This is not a correction; this is an unauthorized insertion that violated the Revised Penal Code," Topacio said.

Under Article 170 of the Revised Penal Code, falsification of legislative documents occurs when a person, without proper authority, alters a bill or resolution enacted or pending approval by Congress.

Budget dispute and political timing

Earlier, Appropriations Panel Acting Chair Stella Quimbo argued that the supposed blank items were merely ministerial calculations authorized by the bicam panel and did not constitute illegal insertions.

Khonghun questioned the timing of the case, calling it a “desperate move to discredit the impeachment process.”

When the impeachment complaint was sent to the Senate, suddenly, there was this action against Speaker Romualdez... Speaker Romualdez has been instrumental in ensuring that the rule of law is followed, and now he is being targeted to weaken the case against VP Duterte," Khonghun said.

The issue was first raised by former President Rodrigo Duterte and Davao Rep. Isidro Ungab, the former chair of the House appropriations committee. Senatorial aspirant Vic Rodriguez, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s former executive secretary and now aligned with the Duterte camp, has also petitioned the legality of the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) before the Supreme Court.

Earlier, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, whose name came up among the respondents, asserted that the Palace would not be held liable as they had no hand in the bicam report, a matter, he claimed, internal to Congress.

Nonetheless, Bersamin maintained that there were no blank items in the enrolled budget bill, the version forwarded to Marcos for his signature. This year's expenditure dropped to P6.326 trillion from P6.352 trillion after Marcos vetoed line items inconsistent with his administration’s priority programs.