Amazon applies to court to stop Microsoft from working on $10bn JEDI cloud project

Contract award decision was influenced by political interference and evaluation errors, Amazon argues in lawsuit

Amazon has officially applied to a US federal court to stop Microsoft from working on the Pentagon's JEDI cloud project until its validity has been tested in court.

In a statement, Amazon Web Services (AWS) said that it was a "common practice to stay contract performance while a protest is pending".

The company also argued that the award of the Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure (JEDI) project was influenced by political interference, and that the tender was undermined by evaluation errors.

Microsoft is supposed to be starting work on the contract on 11th February.

Earlier in November, the company filed a lawsuit in the US Court of Federal Claims, challenging the Department of Defence's (DoD) decision to award the $10 billion JEDI contract to Microsoft.

Amazon was long considered a favourite for the project until DoD announced in October that it was awarding the contract to Microsoft.

The decision came as a surprise to Amazon, which was the favourite to win the contract. It has alleged that it was unfairly prevented by the Department of Defense from winning the contract due to political pressure from President Trump.

Trump's dislike of Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is not a secret. In August, President Trump disclosed that his administration was reviewing Amazon's bid for the contract following complaints that contract specifications favoured Amazon.

In October, a report published in military-focused website Task & Purpose, based on the upcoming biography of James Mattis, claimed that President Trump had instructed the Secretary of Defence Mattis, to "screw Amazon" out of the contract.

In November, Amazon told the court that it planned to use two video clips of Trump's comments about the contract to make a case of interference.

One video clip showed a Fox News host urging President Trump to keep the Pentagon from awarding the deal to Amazon.

In the second clip, Trump was seen telling reporters that he had received multiple complaints from tech firms about the contract being awarded to Amazon.

On Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Robert Carver said that the DoD was confident in its JEDI contract decision and would "continue to fight to put this urgently-needed capability into the hands of our men and women in uniform as quickly and efficiently as possible".

The court will issue a decision in the case on 11^th February 2020.