A two-year-old report on the sedition case filed against Vice President Leni Robredo has been resurrected this month to claim that she has a pending court case.
The circulating post is misleading. It used a 24 Oras report dated July 18, 2019, from GMA News about the Philippine National Police filing a complaint against Robredo and 37 others for their supposed involvement in the production and spread of the “Ang Totoong Narcolist” videos. They were accused of sedition, inciting to sedition, cyberlibel, libel, estafa, harboring a criminal, and obstruction of justice.
TikTok user vanz uploaded a copy of the report in December and superimposed text that read: “ITO NG [sic] HINIHINTAY NYO GUYS may Kaso Pala itong c Leni (This is what you’ve been waiting for guys, Leni apparently has a case).” It got over 3.7 million views.
The TikTok post was subsequently uploaded this Feb. 10 by Facebook (FB) page Solid BongBong Marcos and Sarah Duterte sa Cebu (created on Oct. 11, 2021), which has garnered over 685,000 views as of Feb. 15.
On Feb. 10, 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) dismissed, for lack of probable cause, the complaints filed against all respondents which included Robredo, several opposition senators, members of the Otso Diretso senatorial slate, clergymen, and lawyers, among others.
However, it indicted former senator Antonio Trillanes IV and 10 others for conspiracy to commit sedition.
The “Ang Totoong Narcolist” is a video series that linked the family of President Rodrigo Duterte to the illegal drug trade. The allegations were from Peter Joemel Advicula, who introduced himself as the hooded “Bikoy” character featured in the videos.
Solid BongBong Marcos and Sarah Duterte sa Cebu’s misleading video surfaced on FB the same day the Commission on Elections’ First Division dismissed three petitions that sought to disqualify former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. from the 2022 presidential election.
Its video could have reached 3.5 million people according to social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)