Former price-gouging pharmaceutical company CEO Martin Shkreli asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at a congressional hearing Thursday, but still managed to conduct himself like a professional douchebag for the world to see.
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His company bought the rights to the drug Daraprim, which treats a deadly parasitic infection, and raised the price from a pill to 0 a pill.
Shkreli became the center of national attention after hiking the price of a potentially lifesaving drug more than 5000% overnight while he was the top executive at Turing Pharmaceuticals.
“I intend to follow the advice of my counsel, not yours”, said Shkreli after South Carolina Republican Representative Trey Gowdy suggested he could answer questions that were unrelated to pending fraud charges against him.
At a hearing on prescription drug prices, he pointed to newly released documents from a committee investigation that showed Turing approved raises for its officers at a board meeting and spent thousands of dollars on chartered yachts, celebrity performances, and a “fireworks package”.
“Do you think you’ve done anything wrong?” She said the misinformation about drug pricing was a public relations problem.
“It’s unfortunate”, said Brafman, who’s defended celebrity clients like Michael Jackson and Jay-Z.
Martin Shkreli faces off with the House Oversight Committee on Thursday.
Chaffetz asked. Shkreli gave the same answer again.
The seemingly unethical behavior by Shkreli has earned him many nicknames including “Pharma’s Bad Boy”, “Pharmabro”, etc. Needless to say, the price hike sparked outrage past year among patients, medical societies and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Afterwards, Brafman said it was “a frustrating morning” because Shkreli wants to answer questions. It’s not amusing, Mr. Shkreli. “There are very real issues for people with compromised immune systems”, he thundered as he asked Turing executive Nancy Retzlaff to interpret the messages on Shkreli’s Twitter account. “If she needs Daraprim to survive, what do you say to her?” Retzlaff said in written testimony prior to the hearing that Turing reduced Daraprim’s price by 50% in November, and that some of the company’s profits from the drug would be channeled into R&D.
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“There is a natural reaction that when people know something and are not telling it, that there something they are hiding”, criminal defense attorney Nathaniel Marmur said.
