Bulletins

Court will hear AWS claims of improper Trump meddling in JEDI contract

Microsoft and Amazon are still squabbling over the Department of Defense cloud contract.

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims on Wednesday denied a petition from Microsoft and the Department of Defense to throw out claims made by AWS that former President Donald Trump interfered in the decision to award the JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft in 2019.

The decision, which was entered under seal in the court docket but confirmed by an AWS representative, will allow AWS to argue that Trump's public statements about the JEDI contract improperly influenced the decision to give Microsoft a ten-year, $10 billion contract to remake the military's enterprise tech environment.

During his term, Trump made no secret of his disdain for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in several public appearances and reportedly ordered former Defense Secretary James Mattis to "screw Amazon" out of the contract.

Tom Krazit

Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is Protocol's enterprise editor, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire, and served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure.

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