The prosecution and the defense in Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial opened the trial’s 14th day on August 11, 2026, sparring over a missed meeting to compare confidential-fund documents, with the presiding officer settling on his own description of what happened: the defense had “ghosted” the prosecution.
Private prosecutor Lorna Kapunan made a manifestation at the start of the session, saying the House panel had messaged Duterte’s lawyers the previous week to set a date to stipulate on documentary evidence, as the impeachment court had directed, but got no timely reply. “Ito po ang nangyari, na-indian po kami,” Kapunan told the court — Filipino slang for being stood up. She said the panel sent messages Wednesday and waited through Thursday without an answer.
According to GMA News, the defense counsel only responded at 5:38 p.m. on Thursday, offering to meet on Friday, August 14 — outside the window the court had set. Kapunan argued the presiding officer’s directive to agree on a Thursday or Friday date the previous week had been clear.
Presiding Officer Francis “Chiz” Escudero pushed back on the “indian” characterization. He said the chair had ordered the parties to meet, but that the meeting did not happen “for whatever reason, lack of lawyers or inclement weather.” He told Kapunan that she may have been “ghosted” rather than deliberately stood up, since no date had actually been agreed upon. “Maybe you got ghosted because they didn’t respond to you,” Escudero said, per the Manila Times, before directing Duterte’s lawyers to furnish the court with copies of their pre-marked pieces of evidence from pre-trial.
The dispute stemmed from the court’s effort to speed up the presentation of Commission on Audit records tied to alleged irregularities in Duterte’s confidential-fund disbursements. The defense had declined to enter a joint stipulation on thousands of acknowledgment receipts covering the Office of the Vice President’s liquidation of P125 million in confidential funds in 2022, arguing the loose, unattached documents were too voluminous to vouch for on the spot. That refusal meant prosecution witness Xylene Mae del Campo, a COA state auditor, would otherwise have to testify on more than 4,000 individual documents.
To break the logjam, the defense proposed relying on a rule of evidence allowing a witness to testify from summaries rather than a document-by-document comparison. The court ultimately allowed the prosecution to proceed with its witness using a summary of the records, subject to cross-examination by the defense.
Monday’s scheduled hearing had been canceled because of heavy monsoon rains, pushing the trial’s sixth week to a Tuesday start. The proceedings center on Article 1 of the impeachment complaint, which alleges the misuse of P612.5 million in confidential funds by the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education in 2022 and 2023.
