What the court of impeachment didn’t entertain, the court of public opinion gave its full attention. The former president’s son, incumbent Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte, might have succeeded better at projecting intimidating strength if only he hadn’t been tauntingly shadowed by former Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who doesn’t need tattoos to look tough. Both men are as subtle as crowbars, but only one has a track record of not only surviving but besting his foes—ask the former president.

The prosecution, at his own request, withdrew him as a witness. Then he held a press conference to reveal what he says he would have said in the impeachment court. You’d likely have had to be living under a rock to miss what he had to say: the P96-million withdrawal, deposits he says are missing from the Veep’s statements of assets, Sebastian Duterte’s monthly bills, and the P181.65 million he says came from Samuel Uy, with an amount attributed to individual family members. His claims about a China connection included his allegation that P319 million from the Chinese government and Chinese companies went to a company linked to the Veep’s husband, Atty. Manases Carpio, and P150 million to a foundation linked to her.

He didn’t mince words when it came to the Senate, asking why the presiding officer, Sen. Francis Escudero, issued subpoenas to every prosecution witness except him, even saying, he claimed, that he was “not welcome,” and then telling the public to watch the presiding officer. Later that evening, in subsequent interviews, Trillanes pointedly told Escudero and Sen. Joel Villanueva to shape up.

Trillanes accomplished two things. He made what had increasingly become a catatonic exercise briefly exciting again, and what’s more, did it in a way the Veep’s defenders apparently had a hard time addressing, much less rebutting. Recall that the framing of the immediate days preceding Trillanes’ press conference was to give the impression of a supposedly super-tough, maximally-intimidating Mayor Duterte scornfully answering questions before the Senate while slyly giving the body the finger. The problem was that if it was a question of toughness, the young Duterte could learn a thing or two from Trillanes.

Say what you will about Trillanes, he has earned a reputation for never backing down from a fight. This cannot be said of his nemeses, the former president or even his son, who, some have uncharitably pointed out, had previously issued challenges and then failed to show up when those challenges were surprisingly accepted by a daring few.

Then Trillanes rattled off figures painting a picture that strikes at the heart of the carefully cultivated image of the Dutertes as uninterested in and thus beyond reproach when it comes to money. Soon after the press conference was held, former Rep. Robert Ace Barbers said 19 transactions picked at random from Trillanes’ sworn affidavit had matched the records of the Anti-Money Laundering Council, so the question was no longer whether to believe Trillanes, but which of his claims other official records might prove. Which, gauging from the relative lack of focus on this corroboration, wasn’t really the slam-dunk point; the daring was the thing.

The daring is indeed the thing because it’s what makes Trillanes good copy. He also upended what had increasingly become an overly cozy relationship between the impeachment court’s presiding officer and the lawyers—what critics have called the overjudicialization of the proceedings—and reminded everyone concerned that this is a trial by jury and the jury happens to be the public (I still think senators would be more effective if they accepted they are actually jurors, too, but their robes have already dazzled them beyond convincing). This is the court of public opinion that will one day render judgment on the judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, and the defendant alike.

While both served in the Senate, I suppose only Trillanes, unlike Escudero, remembers way back when the core of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s political defense was “pare-pareho lang ‘yan,” which is the core of the Duterte defense to this day: how dare the Marcoses or anyone else judge them when they are all the same, anyway. Then, as now, the public understood that there is a difference between what is widely understood and what is specifically proven; the former is (probably a well-founded) suspicion, the latter, eventually an undeniable fact—and it is the undeniable that must be acted upon, now.

Stripped of all the legalese, the issue was once again joined: are these findings the characteristics of a person deserving not only continued public trust, but access to public office? That is the heart of an impeachment. Most interesting, to me, watching the flow and ebb of comments and reactions online, was that the Veep’s defenders could only rely on two tactics: try to laugh Trillanes out of the room and try to insist he made his accusations in the wrong forum. But they could neither dispute nor debunk his ultimate claim of facts.