Martin Shkreli Invokes the Fifth Amendment in House Appearance

Martin Shkreli’s grilling by Congress on Thursday proved to be the spectacle that many had long anticipated.

Lawmakers excoriated him. He fidgeted, he smirked, he smiled for the cameras. And he refused to answer questions.

Mr. Shkreli, the former chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, who is facing federal securities fraud charges, repeatedly exercised his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination, infuriating members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the committee treated with such contempt,” Representative John L. Mica, a Florida Republican, said after Mr. Shkreli was excused and left the hearing. Mr. Mica asked if Mr. Shkreli could be held in contempt of Congress. The committee chairman, Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, said he did not intend to do so.
The hearing, about drug prices, focused on the actions of Turing and another company, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, which acquired the rights to decades-old drugs and increased their prices by huge amounts overnight.

Rising drug prices have spurred public outrage, provided grist for the presidential campaign and attracted the attention of various congressional committees.

The price increases by Turing and Valeant on obscure drugs account for little in terms of overall drug spending compared with smaller but still substantial increases made by other companies. But these particular increases seem to have spurred outrage even among Republicans, who in general have been less willing than Democrats to criticize the drug industry’s pricing practices.

Little of substance was discussed on what to do about the increases. Instead, lawmakers from both parties took turns berating Mr. Shkreli, Turing and Valeant with words like “scandal,” “disgusting” and “disgraceful.”

Mr. Chaffetz, citing internal Turing documents, pressed Nancy Retzlaff, the company’s chief commercial officer, into conceding that Turing had increased salaries of some executives to $600,000 or more and had paid $23,000 to rent a yacht for a party.

Mr. Shkreli did answer “yes” when Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, asked if he had pronounced his name properly.

Mr. Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, pounced on that, saying that Mr. Shkreli could indeed answer questions if they were not about the matters for which he was indicted, including whether he had actually purchased the single copy of an album by Wu-Tang Clan. Mr. Gowdy complained that Mr. Shkreli “didn’t have to be prodded to talk” when granting television interviews or tweeting or live-streaming his daily life.