On camera, the 32-year-old was seen laughing, yawning, turning his head away from committee members and dismissing questions.
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Shkreli: On the advice of counsel, I invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and respectfully decline to answer your question.
He repeatedly declined to answer questions about the effects of the price hike on patients.
Presentations by Turing executives, part of the trove of documents, show that as early as last May, the company planned to turn Daraprim into a $200-million-a-year drug by dramatically increasing its price.
“Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli – widely reviled for astronomically jacking up prescription medication for HIV and cancer sufferers – continued to annoy as he remained silent at a United States congressional hearing on pill pricing.
Shkreli appeared to smile throughout his hourlong appearance and, moments afterward, insulting tweets began to appear under his official account calling the lawmakers “imbeciles”. He was accused of running his two investment hedge funds and firms like a Ponzi scheme created to cheat investors about the value of assets he managed.
It wasn’t long before he was arrested and charged with securities fraud.
In an era when the corporate apology has become an art-form, Shkreli used his forum to lash back at his critics.
Loudly referring to an internal company document in which a Turing staffer joked about the price hike, he told the executive: “You all spent all of your time strategizing about how to hide your price increase … and coming up with stupid jokes while other people were sitting there trying to figure out how they were going to survive”. “All I ask is that you reflect on it. No, I don’t ask, I beg that you reflect on it”.
The self-styled “world’s most eligible bachelor” and “most successful Albanian to ever walk the face of this Earth” even refused to confirm he had paid a reported $2.8 million for the only known copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album.
“I think it definitely angered a lot of people”.
Republican Mr Chaffetz said after Mr Shkreli’s departure that he was disgusted. He was being true to himself. The response is enough to make us feel like imbeciles. When CBS News’ Valdimir Duthiers joined the online video chat, Shkreli immediately shut him down.
Brafman referred to Shkreli as a “scientist” while speaking to the media on Thursday.
Shkeli announced several days ago that he would be pleading the Fifth at today’s hearing, but the questions today appeared to test his self-restraint.
Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland scolded him, and blasted the practices of the entire pharmaceutical industry.
“I want to ask you something”.
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Later, Shkreli re-tweeted dozens of messages from his followers offering support and criticizing the committee members.
