Infamous pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli will go before a House panel on Thursday, but don’t expect much in the way of conversation.
“He will appear and then invoke his Fifth Amendment [rights]. That is it,” Shkreli’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman, told the Washington Examiner Wednesday.
Shkreli is expected to attend a House Oversight Committee hearing on prescription drug prices. Shkreli formerly ran the drug company Turing Pharmaceuticals, which acquired an anti-parasite drug called Daraprim in August and raised the price 5,000 percent.
Shkreli was widely expected to take the Fifth, as he faces federal securities fraud charges stemming from earlier business dealings not related to Turing. He resigned from Turing and was ousted from another biotech company called KaloBios after he was arrested in December.
The decision comes a day after Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, released a slew of internal company documents.
“These new documents provide a rare, inside look at the motivations and tactics of drug company executives,” said Cummings, who also released documents on Valeant Pharmaceuticals. “They confirm what Americans across the country have experienced firsthand for years — that many drug companies are lining their pockets at the expense of some of the most vulnerable families in our nation.”
The documents outlined a pursuit of profits as the motivation for the high price, as opposed to a need for more research and development funds as Shkreli has long claimed.
“Should be a very handsome investment for all of us,” according to an email from Shkreli outlined in the report.
Brafman also told the Examiner that he has asked his client to stop giving any media interviews, and Shkreli has agreed.
The agreement came after Shkreli taped an interview on the hip-hop radio show “The Breakfast Club,” which aired Wednesday.
During the interview, Shkreli sounded off on his love of hip-hop, his decision to buy the sole copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album for $2 million and the outrage against him.
“That is business. You can’t hold back, you can’t go halfway,” he said about the decision to jack up the price from $13.50 a pill to $750. “There are drugs 10 times this price. This is not an insane price. If you know the drug business, you know this is not that expensive.”
