Company says president wanted to harm Bezos in awarding of cloud-computing deal to Microsoft
WASHINGTON— Amazon.com Inc. said President Trump exerted “improper pressure” on the Pentagon to keep a lucrative cloud-computing deal from going to his perceived enemy, company founder Jeffrey Bezos.
In a complaint filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, Amazon said the president “launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks” on the contract and the company to steer the contract away from Amazon and Mr. Bezos, according to the complaint, which was made public Monday.
Amazon was long considered the favorite to win the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract, which is valued at as much as $10 billion over the next decade. The company’s bid was clouded by conflict-of-interest allegations, however, which are still under investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general.
While the Pentagon initially concluded that the alleged conflict didn’t affect the integrity of the procurement process, it nonetheless ruled in the end that Microsoft Corp. was more qualified for the job.
In its newly public bid protest, Amazon says that Pentagon officials made numerous missteps in evaluating its application because of pressure from Mr. Trump.
The president on July 19 called for an investigation of the Pentagon contract, before the award. “I’m getting tremendous complaints about the contract with the Pentagon and Amazon,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the time. “I will be asking them to look very closely to see what’s going on.” Mr. Trump also issued tweets in which he complained about the process.
Mr. Trump has blamed Mr. Bezos for unfavorable coverage of his administration in the Washington Post, which Mr. Bezos bought in 2013 for $250 million. The Post says its editorial decisions are independent.
In recent congressional testimony, a top Pentagon technology official, Dana Deasy, denied that Mr. Trump or the White House influenced the JEDI selection process.
But Amazon’s protest argues: “Rarely, if ever, has a President engaged in such a blatant and sustained effort to direct the outcome of a government procurement—let alone because of personal animus and political objectives.”
The White House referred questions to the Pentagon, which in a statement said the “selection decision was made by an expert team of career public servants and military officers from across the Department of Defense and in accordance with DOD’s normal source-selection process.”
“There were no external influences on the source selection decision,” the statement said. “The department is confident in the JEDI award and remains focused on getting this critical capability into the hands of our warfighters as quickly and efficiently as possible.”
Microsoft, which has intervened in the Amazon lawsuit to defend the award, didn’t immediately comment.
Among other evidence for Mr. Trump’s alleged bias, Amazon’s complaint cites a passage of a recent book by a former speechwriter for Jim Mattis, a former Trump defense secretary. Author Guy Snodgrass says in the book, “Holding the Line,” that Mr. Trump directed Mr. Mattis to “screw Amazon” out of the JEDI contract by blocking its chance to bid on the JEDI deal. “Mattis demurred,” he added.
Amazon also says the Defense Department took “numerous actions” during the evaluation process that disadvantaged Amazon.
For example, Amazon says that the Pentagon “at the eleventh hour” changed its interpretation of the bid criteria, rejecting Amazon’s plan to use existing data centers to help fulfill the contract requirements. That—along with other unfair actions by the Pentagon—resulted in increases in Amazon’s total evaluated price, the company said.
AWS was originally awarded this contract but Safra Catz (co-CEO Oracle) is on Trump advisory committee. She planted the seeds that Bezos can’t be trusted due to his ownership of Washington Post and what that publication has been saying about Trump.
Fully expect Oracle to make a huge run at this business. And don’t forget, Oracle was started as a company from an initial contract with the CIA. There’s not a single tech company more aligned with the US government than Oracle.
A work boycott from the Group of Nine is yet another hurdle to the company’s efforts to compete for sensitive government work.
.. Earlier this year, a group of influential software engineers in Google’s cloud division surprised their superiors by refusing to work on a cutting-edge security feature. Known as “air gap,” the technology would have helped Google win sensitive military contracts. The coders weren’t persuaded their employer should be using its technological might to help the government wage war, according to four current and former employees. After hearing the engineers’ objections, Urs Hölzle, Google’s top technical executive, said the air gap feature would be postponed, one of the people said. Another person familiar with the situation said the group was able to reduce the scope of the feature.
.. The act of rebellion ricocheted around the company, fueling a growing resistance among employees with a dim view of Google’s yen for multi-million-dollar government contracts. The engineers became known as the “Group of Nine” and were lionized by like-minded staff. The current and former employees say the engineers’ work boycott was a catalyst for larger protests that convulsed the company’s Mountain View, California, campus and ultimately forced executives to let a lucrative Pentagon contract called Project Maven expire without renewal.
He earned the slightly mocking nickname of “Putin’s cook.”
Despite his humble, troubled youth, Mr. Prigozhin became one of Russia’s richest men, joining a charmed circle whose members often share one particular attribute: their proximity to President Vladimir V. Putin.
.. According to the indictment, Mr. Prigozhin, 56, controlled the entity that financed the troll factory, known as the Internet Research Agency, which waged “information warfare against the United States” by creating fictitious social-media personas, spreading falsehoods and promoting messages supportive of Donald J. Trump and critical of Hillary Clinton. He has denied involvement.
.. he has emerged as Mr. Putin’s go-to oligarch for that and a variety of sensitive and often-unsavory missions, like recruiting contract soldiers to fight in Ukraine and Syria.
.. “He is not afraid of dirty tasks,”
.. “He can fulfill any task for Putin, ranging from fighting the opposition to sending mercenaries to Syria,” she said. “He serves certain interests in certain spheres, and Putin trusts him.”
.. the Kremlin endorsed projects like the troll farm without directly organizing them.
“This is done by somebody who receives large-scale government contracts,” he said. “The fact that he gets these contracts is a hidden way to pay for his services.”
.. When the troll factory was formed in 2013, its basic task was to flood social media with articles and comments that painted Russia under Mr. Putin as stable and comfortable compared to the chaotic, morally corrupt West. The trolls soon branched into overseas operations focused on Russian adversaries like Ukraine and the United States.
.. Facebook found, for example, that the agency had posted 80,000 pieces of content that reached more than 126 million Americans.
.. limited details about his personal life have emerged, mostly through the Instagram accounts of his two grown children.
One picture featured his son, Pavel, walking naked on the deck of the 115-foot family yacht. Other pictures showed a private jet and a vintage powder blue Lincoln Continental, said to be Mr. Prigozhin’s favorite car.
.. sweeping view from his wooded compound in Gelendzhik, the resort town on the Black Sea.
.. pier for the yacht, was built in an ostensibly protected forest much beloved by Mr. Putin and his cronies
.. In exchange for providing soldiers to protect Syria’s oil fields, companies linked to Mr. Prigozhin were awarded a percentage of the oil revenue
.. The only clues are the companies’ overlapping ties, including the same managers, shared telephone numbers or IP addresses.