2/10/2020

BUSINESS/COURTS/DEFENSE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Amazon has asked a federal court to let it depose President Trump and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, arguing that hearing from them is essential to determining if they intervened against the internet company when the Pentagon awarded a multibillion-dollar contract to a competitor. The request, which was unsealed on Monday, escalates a legal battle over a major cloud computing contract to modernize the Pentagon’s operations, called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project, or JEDI. Amazon Web Services, the largest cloud provider, was widely considered the front-runner for the $10 billion contract, but in October, the Defense Department surprised analysts when it awarded the project to Microsoft, the No. 2 provider in the market.”

Karen Weise, “Amazon Looks to Question Trump in Pentagon Contracting Case,” The New York Times online, February 10, 2020