Martin Shkreli, the former pharmaceutical CEO notorious for raising the price of Daraprim — a life-saving HIV drug — by 5,000 per cent last year, beamed as he invoked the Fifth Amendment to respond to questions from the U.S. House Oversight Committee on Thursday. Shkreli is being investigated for securities fraud, and is said to have lost $40 million in the value of his trading account since his arrest in December.
"I want to ask you something. What do you say to that single pregnant woman who has AIDS, and no income?" Utah's Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz asked Shkreli on Thursday. "If she needs Daraprim to survive, what do you say to her?"
"On the advice of my council I invoke my Fifth Amendment...privilege against self-incrimination, and respectfully decline to answer your question," he said.
Shkreli repeated the same response to numerous questions.
Maryland Representative U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democrat, grew visibly annoyed by Shkreli's grinning silence.
"It's not funny, Mr. Shkreli," he later snapped at the 32-year-old former hedge fund manager. "People are dying and they're getting sicker and sicker,"
Shkreli was eventually escorted out of the hearing room, after which he tweeted that members of the Congress were "imbeciles."
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