Amazon has filed suit after indicating last month that they would challenge the U.S. Department of Defense process for awarding the huge contract to Microsoft.
Monday’s protest complaint was filed by the company at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims regarding the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract. Also known as JEDI, the contract could be worth up $10 billion over 10 year to provide cloud computing services to DoD.
The 103-page complaint is heavily redacted. However, Amazon claims that Amazon Web Services (AWS), was technically superior to Microsoft Azure cloud services, and that key contract tests were not passed by Microsoft. Trump also steered away from AWS.
Amazon’s argument is summed up in the opening paragraphs.
A thorough review of the decision will reveal egregious errors in nearly every evaluation factor. These include ignoring AWS’s unique strengths, failing to address JEDI’s technical requirements and deviating from DoD’s evaluation criteria to create a false sense that there is parity between the offerors. These fundamental errors are not to be ignored.
These errors were not the result of capricious and arbitrary decisionmaking. These errors were caused by improper pressure from President Donald J. Trump, whose repeated public and behind-the scenes attacks to steer JEDI Contract away AWS to harm his perceived political opponent-Jeffrey P. Bezos, founder, CEO, and owner of Amazon.com, Inc. (“Amazon”), were launched repeatedly. The DoD’s pervasive and substantial errors are difficult to understand and impossible for us to evaluate apart from the President’s repeated declarations to “screw Amazon.” Basic justice demands a reevaluation and a new award decision. These are important issues. The question is whether the President should be allowed to use DoD’s budget to pursue his political and personal ends.
You can find a PDF of the redacted file via the Washington Post here.