Trump 'Screwed' Amazon As 'Personal Vendetta' Against Jeff Bezos, Lawsuit Reveals

Amazon claims it lost the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud computing contract because of a "personal vendetta" against it and its CEO Jeff Bezos by president Donald Trump. Microsoft Corporation wound-up winning the contract last October 25.

Amazon had previously won the contract but Oracle Corporation contested the award to Amazon Web Services (AWS) citing conflicts of interest. A senior judge at the United States Court of Federal Claims placed the contract award on hold. The Department of Defense later astounded everyone by awarding the JEDI contract to Microsoft.

AWS provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. AWS controlled 48 percent of the IaaS (information as a service) public cloud services market in 2018, said global research firm Gartner, Inc. Microsoft, which is second behind AWS, had a market share of 16 percent.

On November 22, Amazon filed a lawsuit in federal court contesting the October decision by the Department of Defense. Court documents unsealed this week show Amazon places the blame for losing the JEDI contract squarely on Trump. It contends Trump used his power as president to influence the contract decision as part of his "personal vendetta" against Amazon and Bezos.

"[Trump] used his power to 'screw Amazon' out of the JEDI Contract as part of his highly public personal vendetta against Mr. Bezos, Amazon and the Washington Post," said documents with the Court of Federal Claims.

Amazon said it also didn't win JEDI because of "improper pressure" from Trump. The court documents said Trump "launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks" to steer the contract away from AWS and to harm Bezos, "his perceived political enemy."

It seems Amazon was taken aback by Trump's statements made in July he could intervene in the JEDI contract award process.

“I'm getting tremendous complaints about the contract with the Pentagon and with Amazon," Trump said. "Great companies that are complaining about it, so we’re going to take a look at it. We'll take a strong look at it.”

Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said the decision-making contrct award process was free of "external influences."

"This source selection decision was made by an expert team of career public servants and military officers from across the Department of Defense and in accordance with DOD's normal source-selection process," said Smith.

Amazon, however, bears no ill will towards the Pentagon. On Sunday, Bezos said Amazon will continue to support the Pentagon.

“We are going to support the Department of Defense, this country is important,” said Bezos at an annual defense forum at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. He also said his "view is that if big tech is turning their back on the Department of Defense, this country is in big trouble."