Amazon.com Inc. claims the Pentagon failed to fairly judge its bid for a cloud contract worth up to $10 billion because President Donald Trump viewed company founder Jeffrey Bezos as his "political enemy."
Amazon Web Services, Amazon's cloud unit, claimed in a lawsuit that was made public on Monday that the Defense Department ignored Amazon's superior technology and awarded the contract to Microsoft Corp. despite its "key failures" to comply with requirements for the so-called Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract.
The Pentagon made those errors because of improper interference by Trump, who Amazon said "launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks to steer the JEDI Contract away from AWS to harm his perceived political enemy — Jeffrey P. Bezos," according to the lawsuit. The president has long criticized Bezos, especially for his ownership of The Washington Post.