The White House faces a “very ugly” legal battle with Amazon over the handling of a massive contract to handle the Pentagon’s vast cloud computing needs, experts say, and top administration officials ultimately may have to reveal under oath whether President Trump personally interfered in the process.
The fight is already shaping up as a battle of economic and political super heavyweights, with Mr. Trump making clear his lack of respect for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his business empire, which happens to include The Washington Post.
The Defense Department last month awarded the 10-year, $10 billion military cloud computing contract to Microsoft, surprising observers who believed Amazon was the clear front-runner. With Amazon Web Services now lodging a formal protest and alleging clear political bias that prevented the company from winning the lucrative deal, attention turns to a potentially explosive legal proceeding likely to ensnare the president, Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper and other top officials across the federal government.
The fight over the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program is gearing up during impeachment proceedings in the House and almost surely will produce another major legal headache for the White House. Analysts say a court battle between the administration and Amazon would center on whether Mr. Trump broke historical precedent and directed the Defense Department to select Microsoft.
The legal fight will likely result in sworn depositions of top administration officials, the release of internal memos and emails regarding JEDI, and other information that may shine a light on what influence, if any, the White House had over the process.