Amazon Wants Trump to Testify in Lawsuit Over $10 Billion Microsoft Contract Alleging ‘Unmistakable Bias’

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Amazon Web Services wants President Donald Trump to testify in a court case against the Pentagon over its $10 billion cloud-computing contract with Microsoft from October 2019, according to NPR. Unsealed court documents on Monday detail what Amazon claims is an “unmistakable bias” in favor of Microsoft in the deal.

Amazon is also requesting testimony from Defense Secretary Mark Esper, former Defense Secretary James Mattis, Defense Department Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy, and other former officials.

The case brought to court in November 2019 calls out Trump for his favoritism toward Microsoft and against several times. In its first two statement of facts, Amazon said Trump has “consistently interfered with the governmental function — including government procurements — to advance his personal agenda” and Trump’s “hostility” toward Amazon and Jeff Bezos led to the decision, per court documents.

Bezos, the founder of Amazon, owns the Washington Post, a newspaper Trump frequently targets as fake news. The documents feature heavy redactions toward the end of the filing against the Department of Defense, but they frequently cite Trump tweets in the case.

The highly-coveted contract is for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, also known as JEDI. Amazon was considered the frontrunner before the decision in October as companies like Oracle, Google, and IBM.

“The acquisition process was conducted in accordance with applicable laws and regulations,” the Defense Department said in a statement in October. “All offerors were treated fairly and evaluated consistently with the solicitation’s stated evaluation criteria.”