Opinion Piece By Jim Rice: Following the Philippines presidential election in May 2016, Rodrigo Duterte uttered a very specific and public threat against a former Human Rights commissioner and newly elected senator, Leila DeLima. “I will have to destroy her in public.” At the time, DeLima was conducting a Senate investigation into Duterte’s alleged extrajudicial killings during the time that he was mayor of Davao City where Duterte had ruled over for nearly 20 years. Shortly thereafter, Senator DeLima was arrested having been charged with several counts of drug trafficking. While the Secretary of Justice delayed the proceedings, DeLima remained in detention until November 2023, a period of 2321 days or nearly 6 years.
Following his election in May 2016, former President Rodrigo Duterte embarked on his ambitious project for the Philippines. This included a number of campaign promises such as ending corruption, embarking on large scale infrastructure projects and realigning Philippine foreign policy from its historically close ties with the United States to one more in tune with the PRC. The most high profile of these promises was his campaign to end the trafficking and use of narcotic drugs. Duterte’s repeated pledge to the voters was simply to end the drug problem by killing both traffickers and users. Duterte’s highly controversial policy of extrajudicial killings has long been the focus of western media attention. However Duterte also was determined to flatten political opposition by prosecuting and jailing his perceived political enemies.
Donald Trump has taken up the same authoritarian tactic of amassing and consolidating political power through inciting fear through the selective prosecution of his political opponents. One of the central themes of his presidential campaign came from a speech he gave at his kickoff rally in Waco Texas in May 2024. In that speech Trump stated: “I am your warrior, I am your justice, for those who have been wronged and betrayed … I am your retribution. I am your retribution.”
Trump’s theme of revenge was brought into sharp focus on September 25, 2025 when former FBI Director, James Comey was indicted on two felony counts, of lying to Congress and obstruction of justice. The indictment was foreshadowed a few days earlier when on September 21, he posted on Truth Social, a message directly to the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, directing her to bring criminal charges against Comey and others including Senator Adam Schiff and others. In the post Trump stated to the Attorney General that that the lack of criminal charges (thus far) against his top adversaries was “killing our reputation and credibility.” Trump further stating in the same post, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED NOW!!!” (sic)
To arrive at the point where the former Director of the FBI was criminally indicted, Trump had ordered the dismissal of his chosen Justice Department lawyer who had indicated that there was insufficient evidence to bring a case. Trump then selected one of his personal legal team, Lindsey Halligan to prosecute Comey. It has been widely noted that Ms. Halligan has no experience either in bringing prosecutions or trial practice. Given this total lack of experience or expertise, it must be concluded that Ms. Halligan was hired for her unquestioned loyalty to Trump himself.
Subsequently, on October 10, Letitia James, the New York State Attorney General was indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia on the charges of bank fraud and making false charges to a financial institution. The indictment alleges that James falsely claimed that a home in Norfolk, Virginia, was her second residence, allowing her to obtain favorable loan terms. The property was then used as rental property.
As with the charges brought against Comey, the indictment against James is widely believed to be a part of Trump’s campaign of political retribution against his perceived enemies. It was Letitia James who had successfully prosecuted Trump’s core property business for bank fraud that resulted in a conviction by a jury and an award of 354 million dollars against the Trump organization.
By October 14, 2025, it is widely believed that Trump’s campaign of politically motivated revenge included other targets including John Bolton, (former National Security Advisor) who was indicted for the improper handing of classified materials on October 17. Other perceived “enemies” include Senator Adam Schiff former special counsel Jack Smith, Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and former New Jersey Governor Christ Christie.
While Trump made politically motivated retribution one of his campaign slogans, Duterte made similar threats against those that had crossed him. In addition to ordering the prosecution of DeLima, Duterte also ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute Maria Ressa, journalist and founder of the online news outlet Rappler. She was convicted of the offense of cyber libel in 2020 despite the fact that the allegations Rappler made were true and, that at the time of publishing, the cyber libel law had not yet come into effect. Subsequently, the appellate court upheld her conviction. Ressa was sentenced to more than six years in prison as well as an order to shut down the online media outlet. Were she to be convicted of the other charges leveled at her, she could have been sentenced to up to 100 years in prison.
From the prosecutions directed at his political enemies, including Lourdes Sereno, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court it was clear that Duterte’s obsession with exacting political revenge was just as much a hallmark of his administration as was his “war on drugs.”
For his part, Trump has lost no time in seeking revenge against all of those individuals and entities that he perceived as being his enemies. Since his inauguration in January 2025, Trump has brought a number of frivolous civil lawsuits against media outlets, CBS, ABC as well as major law firms and universities. By in large, this pressure campaign has worked, with CBS and ABC both offering out of court settlements and academic institutions such as Columbia University bowing to his demands that the government be allowed to interfere in any number of areas including staffing, the curriculum, admissions policy and even course syllabi.
Needless to say, all of these actions by both Duterte and Trump are anathema to the rule of law. They make a mockery of due process under law, but apart from that, under the American legal system, Trump’s social media posts directing the Attorney General to prosecute and his many other statements impugning the “guilt” of his targets will almost certainly compromise actual prosecutions when they go to trial. In fact, Comey (and the other defendants) will almost certainly file a pretrial motion of selective/vindictive prosecution before the Eastern District of Virginia.
Based on the very flimsy cases brought against Comey and James, it is highly unlikely that either of them will result in convictions. However, the sheer weight that is brought to bear by the Justice Department of the United States is considerable and foreboding. All of the defendants will be forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in hiring lawyers. Moreover the nonmonetary costs including mental and physical trauma will without doubt leave their marks on Comey, James and Bolton (as well as the others on Trump’s ‘enemies list’) before they finally emerge from Trump’s campaign of vengeance.
Despite the personal trauma that these cases of “revenge justice” have inflicted on their victims, some good has come out of it. In 2012, Maria Ressa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “for (her) efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”
For his part, Rodrigo Duterte was indicted by the International Criminal Court and in March 2025 was flown to The Hague in order to face trial for crimes against humanity. Whether Trump will face accountability for his own administration’s assaults on American democracy and the rule of law remains to be seen.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/14/rights-advocate-freed-bail-philippines
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/20/trump-bondi-truth-social-00574380
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