THREE WITNESSES, ONE CHAIN OF EVENTS: WHO THE PROSECUTION IS CALLING TO THE STAND JULY 13-15

[An MCT Commentary]

The Senate impeachment court is back in session next week, and the prosecution has already named who it wants on the witness stand from July 13 to 15.

Three people. All subpoenaed.

Each one connected to a chain of events that started with a congressional hearing about missing funds and ended with a Vice President threatening the life of a sitting President on a Zoom call at midnight.

Their names are Jeremy Lotoc, Zuleika Lopez, and Capt. Belinda Bello.

You may not know all three yet. After next week, you probably will.

JEREMY LOTOC: THE NBI MAN WHO INVESTIGATED THE THREAT

Lotoc is the Regional Director of the NBI-BARMM (National Bureau of Investigation, Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao).

He was part of the NBI team that investigated what Sara Duterte said during her online press conference on November 23, 2024.

That press conference is the core of Article IV of the Articles of Impeachment, the formal charges listing the grounds for her removal.

In that early-morning Zoom session, Duterte publicly stated she had already contracted an assassin to kill President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and then-House Speaker Martin Romualdez, in the event that she herself was killed.

At an April 29, 2026 hearing of the House Committee on Justice, Lotoc confirmed that the NBI had invited Sara Duterte twice to explain her side. She never showed up.

When he takes the stand on July 13, his testimony is expected to help authenticate the video evidence tied to that threat and establish that Sara refused to cooperate with the investigation.

ZULEIKA LOPEZ: THE CHIEF OF STAFF WHO SPARKED THE ENTIRE NIGHT

Atty. Zuleika Lopez is Sara Duterte's Chief of Staff at the OVP (Office of the Vice President).

She has been with Sara for years, first as city council secretary during Duterte's vice mayorship in Davao, then as acting city administrator when Sara became mayor.

When Sara moved to the national stage as Vice President in 2022, Lopez came with her.

In November 2024, the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability was demanding audit documents from the COA (Commission on Audit) in connection with the alleged misuse of OVP confidential funds.

Lopez sent a letter to the COA asking it not to comply with the House subpoena for those documents.

That letter got her cited in contempt for "undue interference" in legislative proceedings.

She was detained inside the Batasang Pambansa Complex on November 20, 2024.

While Lopez was detained, Sara held that midnight press conference. Infuriated over her chief of staff's detention and the looming transfer to the CIW (Correctional Institution for Women) in Mandaluyong, Sara went on Zoom and said what she said about the assassin.

Lopez's detention did not cause the threat in a legal sense. But it was the match that lit the room.

The prosecution subpoenaed Lopez to appear on July 14 to tell that story from the inside.

CAPT. BELINDA BELLO: THE ONE WHO SERVED THE TRANSFER ORDER

Capt. Belinda Bello is the Executive Director of the House Legislative Security Bureau, the security arm of the House of Representatives.

Her role in the story is more procedural, but it fills in a critical gap: she was the person who physically served the order to transfer Atty. Lopez from the House detention facility to the CIW in Mandaluyong on November 22, 2024.

That transfer order was what Sara Duterte was reacting to in real time during the press conference.

Sara was watching her most trusted aide get moved to a women's prison, and she broke publicly.

Capt. Bello is on the witness list for July 15 to testify about the circumstances of that transfer and the sequence of events that night.

WHY ALL THREE MATTER TO THE IMPEACHMENT

The prosecution's case for Article IV is not just "Sara said something threatening."

The prosecution is building a chain of events: the confidential funds investigation leads to Lopez getting detained, Lopez's detention triggers Sara's press conference, the press conference contains the assassination threat on video, and the NBI investigated the threat afterward.

Lotoc establishes the investigation and Sara's refusal to cooperate.

Lopez is the human center of the chain of events.

Bello is the person who executed the very action that set Sara off.

The defense's counterargument, raised in the early days of the trial, is that Sara's words were a reaction to what they described as "systematic oppression" of her staff by the House.

But as Senator-judge Risa Hontiveros already pointed out during cross-examination: whether or not Lopez was oppressed does not make a threat against the President legally acceptable.

These three witnesses are not peripheral characters. Each one holds a piece of the timeline the prosecution needs to prove that November 23, 2024 was not just a bad night for Sara Duterte, but a criminal one.