MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte has "full trust" in Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II even as the official drew flak for linking opposition lawmakers to the Marawi City crisis without verification.

Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella said this yesterday even as he called such claims against minority legislators "speculation."

“He has the full trust of the president. He has been doing an excellent job actually in [the] DOJ (Department of Justice),” he said in a press briefing in Davao City.

In the same breath, Abella said Aguirre’s allegations, which the latter has since taken back, “unless really fully vetted, remains a speculation as far as we are concerned.”

“We go by what the president has said that these troubles were directly linked to ISIS,” he added, referring to the international terror group Islamic State, believed to back local extremists behind the weeks-long rampage in the southern city.

Aguirre on Wednesday alleged that Senators Antonio Trillanes IV and Bam Aquino, as well as Magdalo Party-list Rep. Gary Alejano and Ronald Llamas, political adviser of former president Benigno Aquino III, met with the influential Alonto and Lucman clans in Marawi City on May 2, three weeks before the siege in Marawi City broke out.

Aguirre said the meeting could have "sparked terroristic acts" in the city and that it may be part of efforts to destabilize the Duterte administration.

The justice chief even claimed that he had photos to prove the purported meeting.

The photo, however, turned out to be a September 4, 2015 image taken at the Iloilo International Airport.

• Read: LOOK: Aguirre's 'evidence' to link minority lawmakers in Marawi crisis a 2015 photo

Lawmakers tagged by Aguirre have all denied the justice secretary's allegations, branding it as "fake news." Both Trillanes and Aquino said they were in Manila on the day in question.

Aguirre claimed he was misquoted, first apologizing only to the Alonto and Lucman families in a public statement, and later also saying sorry to Aquino privately.

"For the record, I did not say there was a meeting between the two families and some lawmakers prior to the Marawi siege. The said meeting never took place and no member of both families ever met with Senator Trillanes, Congressman Alejano, and Ronald Llamas," Aguirre said in his statement late Wednesday afternoon.

Clashes between government troops and the Islamic State-backed Maute and Abu Sayyaf groups began in Marawi City on May 23 and have left over 200 dead.

The firefight prompted President Rodrigo Duterte to place the entire island of Mindanao under military rule.