“Whatever threat to our President is a threat to our national security.”

That was how National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Atty. Melvin Matibag described the threats that were stated by both Vice President Sara Duterte and her brother Davao City Mayor Sebastian “Baste” Duterte against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

The statement of Matibag came after separate public conferences wherein the siblings implied their similar intention to behead Marcos were presented during the impeachment trial against the Vice President at the Senate on Tuesday, 21 July.

Recordings of the incidents were used in the House prosecution’s presentation of evidence concerning the fourth impeachment article that was aptly regarded as the article on grave threats.

“We are looking at these because we view the threat is serious, active, and continuing with respect to the threat to the President, and because it is serious, active, and continuing it becomes a threat to our national security,” Matibag told the impeachment court.

To recall, the particular conference involving Sara that the investigative agency looked into was a briefing conducted on 17 October 2024, an event that she herself dubbed as the “Drag Me to Hell” press conference.

It was there that the Vice President described her relationship with the President as “toxic” and she infamously said, “I just imagined myself cutting his head.”

Meanwhile, the incident that Matibag referenced when it came to Baste happened at a more recent event, during the launch of the Reform Alliance for Good Governance, otherwise known as the RAGE Coalition, on 12 April of this year.

“We only want one head, the head of Bongbong Marcos,” the mayor told attendees of the event.

Upon questioning from House Prosecutor Rep. Gerville Luistro, the NBI director said that they considered both events in their overall investigation into the threats that instigated the initial investigation of the agency that began in 2024.

The probe stemmed from an online press conference wherein Sara said that she had communicated with an unidentified individual to kill Marcos, first lady Liza Araneta Marcos, and former House Speaker Martin Romualdez.

Matibag said that based on the investigation conducted under the agency, the utterances indicated that the threat towards the President were pre-meditated in nature.

“Our observation of this was it was no longer a threat, but a plan, because we see it as an announcement from the Vice President of her intent to kill the President and the other individuals she mentioned in the press conference,” he said.

‘Kinetic force’

Matibag further said that the various utterances of the Vice President in 2024 had a “kinetic force” to the public, particularly when it came to the threats that have since been directed to Marcos–including the statement of Baste himself.

“We can see here that the threat of the Vice President had an effect, it is a kinetic force wherein the people that heard the threat are copying it, particularly since they are from the same family,” he said.

Given the effect that the incident had on the public up to this day, Matibag told the impeachment court that they had formed a Special Task Force through Administrative Order 11 just to investigate the daily threats being promulgated through social media and other public platforms.

Aside from stating that they saw the same as a threat to national security, he also said that they were treating the issue as “serious, active, and continuing” in nature.