Tech giant Amazon has filed paperwork to protest the U.S. government’s decision to overlook the company’s cloud computing service and award a $10 billion cloud contract to Microsoft, according to multiple reports.
First reported by the Federal Times, a source inside the company confirmed that paperwork was filed last Friday with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
In a video obtained by Federal Times, Jassy said at an all-hands meeting with Amazon Worldwide that the company was going to “push the government to shine a light on what really happened.”
This move was expected ever since the Seattle-based company — widely considered to be the frontrunner for the Pentagon’s JEDI cloud computing program — lost out to its competitor.
The Federal Times cited a video of Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy at a company meeting citing political pressure and Trump’s criticism of Amazon and CEO Jeff Bezos.
“I think when you have a sitting president who’s willing to publicly show his disdain for a company and the leader of a company, it’s very difficult for government agencies including the DoD to make an objective decision without fear of reprisal,” Jassy said.
Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which is a constant thorn in the side to Trump and his administration.
The President has tweeted about Amazon —mostly negatively — at least 30 times, throwing shade at Amazon’s business practices, Bezos and the Post’s reporting.
The @washingtonpost, which loses a fortune, is owned by @JeffBezos for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company, @amazon.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015
Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt – many jobs being lost!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2017
The @washingtonpost loses money (a deduction) and gives owner @JeffBezos power to screw public on low taxation of @Amazon! Big tax shelter
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015
According to the Federalist, Jassy said the company feels like it has a strong case, saying Amazon is clearly ahead of Microsoft’s capabilities.
An Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch that the evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors and “unmistakable bias.”
Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis wrote in his book that Trump told Mattis to “screw Bezos out of that $10 billion contract.”
This process has clearly been mismanaged. Even cloud computing firm Oracle filed several protests throughout the process, but its claims that the process was favoring Amazon were rejected and dismissed.
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