Amazon Challenges Pentagon Award with Trump Videos
Amazon on Friday cited comments by President Trump at a rally and to journalists as it pursues its challenge to the Pentagon’s surprise decision to award a lucrative contract to rival Microsoft last month.
For the first time, Amazon directly linked comments by the president to the award of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, also known as JEDI, to Microsoft last month. Though Amazon filed its protest under seal, it also notified the Court of Federal Claims that it intends to use four videos as exhibits, including one of Trump at a February 2016 campaign rally, as well as one of a Fox News host urging him to prevent the Pentagon from awarding the contract to the online retail giant.
The e-commerce giant formally filed a protest with the Court of Federal Claims to challenge the award of the cloud-computing contract, following through on a threat it made last week. It said it did so under seal to protect trade secrets.
In a statement, the e-commerce giant repeated its claims that “unmistakable bias” and “political influence” tainted the decision-making process. Trump has repeatedly criticized Amazon, whose founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/22/amazon-files-protest-pentagons-billion-jedi-award-under-seal/?wpisrc=al_news__alert-economy--alert-politics--alert-national&wpmk=1