‘Screw Amazon’: online giant seeks Donald Trump’s testimony over US$10 billion Pentagon deal
- Company wants to depose US president and defence chief in lawsuit over award of cloud computing contract to rival Microsoft
- Amazon alleges that Trump, who has publicly derided CEO Jeff Bezos and repeatedly criticised company, exerted undue influence on decision
Amazon Web Services said on Monday it was seeking to depose US President Donald Trump and Defence Secretary Mark Esper in its lawsuit over whether the president was trying “to screw Amazon” when the Pentagon awarded a contract for cloud computing to rival Microsoft.
The Amazon.com Inc unit alleged that Trump, who has publicly derided Amazon head Jeff Bezos and repeatedly criticised the company, exerted undue influence on the decision to deny it the US$10 billion contract.
Known as the Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure Cloud, or Jedi, the contract is intended to give the military better access to data and technology from remote locations.
In the lawsuit, Amazon said it seeks discovery “showing exactly how President Trump’s order to ‘screw Amazon’ was carried out during the decision making process”.
Without this, “the Court cannot objectively and fully evaluate AWS’s credible and well-grounded allegations about bias and bad faith”, the lawsuit said.
