Cummings asked Shkreli to use any influence he may still have over his former pharmaceutical company “to press them to lower the price of these drugs”.
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On Thursday, Shkreli walked into the packed hearing room well before the session began and met the crush of cameras. “But I wish you could see the faces of people… who cannot get the drugs that they need”. He strums his guitar on YouTube and paid a reported $2 million for the only known copy of an album by the Wu-Tang Clan. The one question he did answer: He acknowledged that a committee member had pronounced his name correctly. “It’s very sad”, he said.
Shkreli, 32, is separately accused of looting the pharmaceutical company he had founded, Retrophin, in order to pay off investors he was suspected of defrauding at hedge funds he ran.
While Cummings was speaking, Shkreli appeared to be on the verge of laughter, when Cummings gave him a verbal tongue lashing.
When asked by Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, what he would say about the drug’s price to a patient who needed Daraprim to survive, Shkreli also declined to answer. Shkreli gained notoriety earlier this year for raising the price of Daraprim, a medicine used to treat the parasitic condition of toxoplasmosis, from $13.50 to $750, though the arrest does not involve that price hike. However, by invoking the Fifth Amendment, Shkreli has the Constitutional right not to answer questions which may provide answers that would incriminate himself, a right which prevents a person from becoming a witness at their own trial.
Possibly broke, definitely failed former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli giggled his way through a Congressional committee hearing Thursday instead of answering questions. Interim CEO Howard Schiller acknowledged at the hearing that the company had made mistakes but said “we’re listening and we’re changing”.
Upon being excused after his testimony, Shkreli broke his silence via Twitter.
Shkreli was a trending topic on social media following the hearing. Later he tweeted the following message: “Hard to accept that these imbeciles represent the people in our government”.
What do you think of his behavior?
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Twitter sentiment was negative overall toward Shkreli, according to Zoomph, and some tweets indicated it was not much better toward members of Congress.
