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As the Senate sits as an impeachment court in the trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, the chamber is hearing arguments that are not only legally complex but highly charged. When the stakes are this high, the line between sound reasoning and clever deception inevitably blurs. For the public watching from the gallery or on their screens, this trial is a masterclass—not just in constitutional law, but in the art of logical fallacies. A fallacy is an error in reasoning that undermines the logic of an argument. By dissecting actual arguments, objections, and statements put forth by the Vice President’s defense team, we can learn how to spot these rhetorical sleights of hand.
- The Red Herring (Shifting the Goalposts) – A “Red Herring” is a classic distraction tactic. It occurs when a speaker introduces an irrelevant topic to divert attention from the actual issue at hand. During the trial, the prosecution presented National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) officials to establish that the Vice President’s public remarks about hiring an assassin to target the President constituted “grave threats” and a “betrayal of public trust”—both impeachable offenses.
In response, defense counsel Mark Vinluan pivoted, arguing that “grave threats” and “inciting to sedition” are felonies defined under the Revised Penal Code. Therefore, he argued, they fall under the jurisdiction of standard Municipal or Regional Trial Courts, not the Senate. But this is a distraction. Impeachment is not a standard criminal trial; it is a political process to determine a public official’s fitness for office. By focusing on prison terms and standard court jurisdictions, the defense attempted to shift the debate from “Is the Vice President’s conduct an impeachable betrayal of public trust?” to “Which local court has the authority to issue a six-month jail sentence?”
2. The Appeal to Status (The “Smart Lawyer” Shield) – An Appeal to Authority or Status becomes fallacious when someone’s credentials are used to validate an argument that those credentials have nothing to do with. In a highly publicized courtroom moment, Vinluan sought to defend the VP’s controversial livestreamed comments by highlighting her legal background: “Are you aware that the Vice President is a lawyer?… She passed the Bar exams on her first attempt with a rating of 80 percent. She has a higher grade than most of the lawyers here.” He followed up by asking a witness if it “made sense” for a highly educated lawyer to publicly announce an assassination plot if she were actually serious about it. This is a clever but deeply flawed argument. First, it implies that her academic Bar rating somehow shields her from making impulsive or impeachable threats. Second, it relies on “No True Scotsman” logic: “No rational, highly graded lawyer would make a public threat, therefore her threat was not real.” In reality, a person’s intelligence or professional credentials do not dictate whether their spoken words constitute a threat.
3. Two Wrongs Make a Right (The “Operation Romanov” Defense) – This fallacy attempts to justify an accusation or action by pointing out a separate, sometimes unproven, threat or wrongdoing by the opposing side. The defense team has anchored their justification of the Vice President’s remarks around a counter-allegation: a highly classified, alleged surveillance plot against the Duterte family dubbed “Operation Romanov”. They argued that her public threats against the President, First Lady, and House Speaker were simply a reaction to this existential threat against her own life. Even if we assume “Operation Romanov” existed—a claim the prosecution heavily contests as unverified—pointing to a counter-threat does not logically erase the legality or impeachable nature of the Vice President’s public threats. In logical terms, Threat A (Operation Romanov) does not make Threat B (hiring an assassin) acceptable or legally sound.
4. The Strawman (Twisting the Witness’s Words) – A “Strawman” occurs when a speaker intentionally misinterprets an opponent’s statement to build a distorted, easily defeated caricature of their actual position. This occurred during a sharp cross-examination of NBI Director Jeremy Lotoc. Vinluan asked the witness to confirm if the Vice President’s statements regarding corruption among congressmen were true. When Lotoc replied, “As to the existence of the utterances… yes sir” (meaning the statements were indeed made), Vinluan immediately shot back: “Alright, so you just admitted that the congressmen are all corrupt?” Here, the defense deliberately conflated the existence of a statement with the truth of its contents. By twisting a simple confirmation of physical speech into an admission of systemic government corruption, the defense manufactured a “strawman” admission that the witness never actually made.
Impeachment trials are as much about public relations as they are about constitutional law. Defense teams are not just playing to the senators sitting as judges; they are playing to the court of public opinion. By understanding these rhetorical strategies, we can separate the legal facts of the trial from the logical sleights of hand designed to sway our emotions. After all, a healthy democracy requires citizens who can spot the spin.
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