CHICKENPIE.The lawyers aren't quitting. They're evacuating.
Nicholas Kaufman, lead defense counsel for Rodrigo Duterte's ICC case, has asked to withdraw. His colleague Dov Jacobs already got out. Their reasons are procedural — expired contracts, "reorganization" — but the timing is telling. Trial hasn't started. The evidence hasn't been fully presented. And the people paid to argue Duterte's innocence are reorganizing their way out of the building.
There's a word for this in Tagalog: takbuhan. A stampede. Usually in the other direction.
The ICC chamber approved Jacobs' exit. Kaufman's request is pending. In the meantime, the man who ran the bloodiest anti-drug campaign in recent Philippine history — one the ICC says amounts to crimes against humanity — is sitting in The Hague watching a defense team disappear faster than a Marcos-era audit report.
Defense attorneys are supposed to be the last ones standing. That's the job. You defend even the indefensible. But there's defending the indefensible, and then there's whatever this is.
What does it mean when the professionals who read the case files, study the evidence, and get paid to make the strongest possible argument decide not to make that argument? We're not saying they're running from guilt. We're saying they're running.
Duterte's camp calls it a reset, a reorganization, a strategic pivot. Sure. But in courtroom optics, having your lead counsel exit before trial is roughly equivalent to your star witness canceling due to a scheduling conflict. It is not a great look. It is, in fact, no look at all.
The victims' families are still there. The evidence is still there. The chamber is still there.
The defense isn't.
