Martin Shkreli Plead The Fifth At A Congressional Hearing, Rolled His Eyes At Them, Then Called Them "Imbeciles"
Reuters – At a hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, [former Turing Pharmaceuticals Chief Executive Officer Martin] Shkreli sat at a table with arms crossed and repeatedly declined to answer questions about the effects of the price hike on patients.
“I intend to follow the advice of my counsel, not yours,” Shkreli told Rep. Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican.
U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings reprimanded Shkreli for appearing to laugh during the Maryland Democrat’s opening statement. “It’s not funny, Mr. Shkreli,” Cummings said.
Wearing a sports jacket and collared shirt, Shkreli responded to questions by continuing to laugh, twirling a pencil and yawning.
Cummings added a few minutes later: “You can go down as the poster boy for greedy drug company executives, or you can change the system.”
Shkreli was allowed to leave the hearing early after he repeated that he would not answer any questions at all.
Representative John Mica, a Florida Republican, said he would consider asking fellow lawmakers to hold Shkreli in contempt for his behavior.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the committee treated with such contempt,” Mica said.
I’ve been all over the Martin Shkreli hate train from the beginning, not even as much for the price gouging as much as for being a shameless attention whore reveling in the negative media attention. And here he is, doing the EXACT same thing and I want to hate it but he’s going up against the one entity that makes him seem like the reasonable one in the form of Congress. It’s the immovable object versus the unstoppable force of loathsome entities. And you can even see it in these quotes, here you have a bunch of representatives giving their statements and making their pithy judgmental remarks just to get a blurb in the news and maybe get a talking line in the script for a future movie about Shkreli’s life. No he doesn’t have to incriminate himself thanks to our constitution and no, he definitely doesn’t have to do it to appeal to your media-friendly dog and pony show so you all can get reelected. It’s all just so transparent, not a thing that would help or change things for the better in any way, and completely deserving of him rolling his eyes and acting like that old Chappelle Show skit:
The one thing my mind wandered towards with this though, and maybe it’s the former public relations person in me, but how could Martin Shkreli get his life back on track in the public eye at this point? Guy is making enemies literally everywhere and not doing himself any favors in any respect and the hole he’s digging gets deeper and deeper. Maybe this being his Larry Flynt moment where people think he’s being unjustly persecuted by incompetents helps but that seems like a temporary fix at best. But also maybe there is no saving him at this point? I think even if his company created a drug that cured cancer and gave it away for free at this point people would probably think he’s got some sort of brain control serum in there and wouldn’t trust it for a second. He probably needs some sort of Wiz/Kanye/Kim/Amber Rose-level publicity stunt to bail him out now.