“The Department has completed its comprehensive re-evaluation of the JEDI Cloud proposals and determined that Microsoft’s proposal continues to represent the best value to the Government,” said Russ Goemaere, a Defense Department spokesman. The Pentagon then awarded JEDI to Microsoft, prompting a lawsuit from Amazon. In its bid protest Amazon alleged that Trump’s interest in the JEDI contract was motivated by his antipathy toward Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. By again giving the contract to Microsoft, the Defense Department is arguing that the mistakes it made were not significant enough to affect the outcome. The employee was later found to have broken ethics rules and lied to both Amazon and the Defense Department, although Amazon itself was cleared of wrongdoing.

Source: Washington Post September 04, 2020 18:52 UTC