The Amazon vs Government (or Trump?) saga is taking yet another turn. After making clear its intentions of suing the government over its decision to surprisingly award the priced, $10 billion JEDI contract to Microsoft, Amazon has now given more details on its proposed deposition. And the company is proposing to depose non other than US President Donald Trump along with former Defense Secretary James Mattis, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Dana Deasy, the Pentagon’s chief information officer.
Amazon made sure to mince no words, when issuing its intent to depose the perhaps the most powerful of all within the US federal government. “President Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to use his position as President and Commander in Chief to interfere with government functions – including federal procurements – to advance his personal agenda. The preservation of public confidence in the nation’s procurement process requires discovery and supplementation of the administrative record, particularly in light of President Trump’s order to ‘screw Amazon.’ The question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of the DoD to pursue his own personal and political ends,” an AWS spokesperson said in a rather vivid, blunt and perhaps a bit too overboard statement.
Sources claim that Department of Defence(Dod) gave Amazon a written debriefing after its decision to award the contract to Microsoft. However, Amazon contests that by saying that the department has failed to respond in a timely fashion to requests for additional information and questions, as required by law.
Amazon also says that it has actual proof and concrete evidence of bias and bad faith surrounding the bid.
The Pentagon’s JEDI contract, a $10 billion deal that aims to move America’s defense equipment to cloud, was by and large considered to be a done deal for Amazon’s AWS. In a rather sudden turn of events though, Microsoft was awarded the contract and Amazon was obviously less than thrilled.
Since the announcement, Amazon has argued that the reason for practically snatching away the contract from the company was Trump’s personal difference of opinion with the CEO of Amazon and more importantly, the owner of Washington Post, Jeff Bezos. The decision was argued to be partial by the company who decided to contest it in court.
