Sen. Leila M. de Lima's reaction to the Muntinlupa court's junking of DOJ's indirect contempt charge against her and her lawyer, Atty. Filibon Tacardon

It was a baseless and frivolous petition from the very start, designed to further silence me and my lawyers and to prevent us from relaying to the public how the prosecution cases are crumbling before the court. As the decision of Judge Gito states, my lawyer, Atty. Tacardon was just reiterating, upon my imprimatur, what some prosecution witnesses stated during their cross examination. One of them was Vicente Sy, who categorically said that he does not know me and never delivered any money to me.

Indeed, as the court declared, Atty. Tacardon "merely reported the admissions made by those witnesses," hence, not violative of the sub judice rule. Together with the recent retractions of Rafael Ragos, Kerwin Espinosa, and Ronnie Dayan saying that they were all just coerced by Duterte officials into testifying against me, the dismissal of this contempt charge should now convince the DOJ to review my cases once and for all and decide if there is any merit or honor at all in prosecuting an innocent person.