Shkreli posted the tweet Thursday, after a U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing where lawmakers attempted to get him to answer questions about a decision by his former company to dramatically raise the price of a life-saving anti-infective, Daraprim.
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“I would have told the people of Turing, ‘You want to do a price increase, do it gradually, ‘” Brafman said.
Chaffetz: What do you say to that pregnant woman… who might have AIDS and no income, and she needs Darapim in order to survive? “What do you say to her?” asked Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.
“You cannot change a person, you can only advise a person”, Brafman said.
Shkreli repeatedly used his Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate himself, following his attorney’s advice.
Shkreli repeated the same response to numerous questions.
“Drug company executives are lining their pockets at the expense of some of the most vulnerable families in our nation”, U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, said.
Shkreli became notorious throughout the United States in September, when he raised the price of the antiparasitic drug Daraprim by 5,556 percent, from $13.50 to $750 a pill. When one of the group’s members, Ghostface Killah, heard about the Daraprim controversy, he called Shkreli an eight-letter word that can’t be reprinted here. “It’s called supply-demand. I got the supply and all you [expletive deleted] with HIV, you got the demand”, he said in one YouTube video from last September.
Martin Shkreli’s incessant tweeting and crass statements aren’t going to fly with his new hotshot lawyer.
Lawmakers were prepared for this; Shkreli had earlier this week he planned to follow his lawyers’ advice and plead the Fifth.
While Shkreli was tight lipped inside the hearing, he was not silent on his Twitter page.
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. Wearing a sports jacket and collared shirt, Shkreli responded to questions by continuing to laugh, twirling a pencil and yawning. One such interview featured Shkreli saying he could not wait to “educate” the members of Congress on drug pricing and the pharmaceutical industry.
“It’s not amusing, Mr. Shkreli”, Mr Cummings said.
Schiller pledged that any future drug price increases would be “much more modest” than the increases that enraged Congress.
Also appearing before the lawmakers were Turing’s chief commercial officer and the interim CEO of Canada’s largest drugmaker, Valeant Pharmaceuticals.
With Shkreli mum, it was up to Turing’s Nancy Retzlaff to defend the Daraprim price rise.
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Valeant likewise identified revenue goals first and then used drug prices to reach them, committee staff said in a memo.
