Amazon’s Protest of DoD’s JEDI Cloud Computing Contract: A Legal Analysis

In October 2019, after an approximately two-year competitive bidding procurement process, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced that it had awarded a Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud services contract to Microsoft Corporation. In November 2019, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), the only other remaining bidder on the contract, filed a protest with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (COFC) challenging DoD’s award of the JEDI contract. AWS filed its protest under seal but publicly released a redacted version the following month. AWS alleges that DoD committed “egregious,” “substantial and pervasive errors” in selecting Microsoft over Amazon based on the technical aspects of their proposals that, standing alone, warrant the court’s reversal of the award. However, in addition to these merit-based arguments, AWS also argues that DoD’s failure to evaluate appropriately the technical aspects of AWS’s and Microsoft’s bids was due to the improper “intervention of President Trump, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Military and head of the Executive Branch, in the JEDI procurement and award.” AWS alleges that the President’s intervention stemmed in part from the fact that AWS’ owner, Jeffrey P. Bezos, also owns the Washington Post. On February 13, 2020, the COFC issued a preliminary injunction barring DoD from moving forward on the contract during the litigation.