Amazon files lawsuit challenging Pentagon's decision to award $10bn JEDI contract to Microsoft

Amazon plans to use video clips of President Trump's comments to make a case that the government wrongly interference in the procurement process

Amazon has filed a lawsuit in the US Court of Federal Claims challenging the Pentagon's decision to award a $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft.

Amazon notified the Court that it plans to use two video clips of the comments of President Trump about the contract to make a case of interference. In one video cited by Amazon, a Fox News host urged Trump to keep the Pentagon from awarding the deal to Amazon.

In another clip, Trump told reporters that he had received several complaints from major tech firms about the cloud contract being awarded to Amazon.

The US Department of Defense started the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud (JEDI) project as part of a broader digital transformation process of the Pentagon, involving a general-purpose cloud service for the US military. Amazon was long seen as the favourite for the deal until Microsoft emerged as the winner last month.

Last year, Google withdrew from the contact, citing its new ethical guidelines on artificial intelligence. Later, in April, the Pentagon removed Oracle and IBM from the bidding process, leaving Amazon and Microsoft as the final contenders.

Finally, last month, the Pentagon awarded the contract to Microsoft. Amazon criticised the decision, saying that it believed politics got in the way of a fair bidding process.

Industry analysts have been expecting Amazon to challenge the decision, especially after a report last month claimed that President Trump had instructed the Secretary of Defence, James Mattis, to "screw Amazon" out of the contract.

Last week, the company revealed that it had filed notice in a US Court of Federal Claims indicating its intention to formally protest the Pentagon's decision on the cloud project.

President Trump has criticized Amazon founder Jeff Bezos a number of times in recent years, suggesting that Bezos seeks political influence for Amazon's benefit. Trump also calls the Washington Post, which Bezos owns, the "Amazon Washington Post."

Following President Trump's statement in July regarding complaints about JEDI bidding process, the Pentagon announced one month later that Defence Secretary Mark Esper would review the contract. In October, Esper recused himself from the process on the grounds that one of his sons works for one of the bidding companies.

"We're ready to get to work so the men and women in uniform who serve our country can access the critical new technology they urgently require," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement to GeekWire.

"We have confidence in the qualified staff at the Department of Defence, and we believe the facts will show they ran a detailed, thorough and fair process in determining the needs of the warfighter were best met by Microsoft," it added.

The full details of Amazon's complaint have not been revealed after the company requested a seal, claiming that the documents contained "proprietary information, trade secrets, and confidential financial information," whose public release could cause competitive harm to either party.