That's not substantiated. There are a lot of reasons that Azure could have won this project, highlighted by the fact that they have decades long relationships in terms of executing on government contracts.

The claim is not substantiated publicly because Amazon's filing is currently under seal. Of course, there are many other possible reasons but those are not substantiated either.

That's straight from AWS's U.S. Court of Federal Appeal case. This kind of claim is part of the standard government contract protest package. I'm not convinced.

That is not yet proven. Azure has plenty of other business, so there exist reasons to select it other than corruption. If there wasn’t an openly corrupt president waging a public war with Jeff Bezos there wouldn’t even be the suspicion of this, but given the facts of the man I think Bezos is right to file suit and have it investigated.

If Trump had even a hint of a whiff of a modicum of a crumb of subtlety, he could have gotten a similar result in a way that would preclude such a challenge.

But Trump gonna Trump.

I think you are misreading Trump. The flagrant openness is part of the power play. By doing it openly he denies plausible deniability to his foot soldiers and limits their future ability to defect.

You assume, and AWS claims. Luckily we have courts to decide what really happened.

One could argue that no matter which company is selected.

Actually, only one of these companies has had its CEO personally attacked by the president.

It's all just business, as is this case.

Can you elaborate?

Trump attacked Amazon because of business; he seems to think Amazon is profiting from the US taxpayers' money.

Now Amazon has a strong financial incentive to go to court in this case as winning can lead to potentially securing a 10b$ contract. Whereas losing costs maybe some millions?

Both Bezos and Trump are very pragmatic business men. I think this is all just about money.

If you really thing Trump dislikes Bezos because of "profiting from the US taxpayer" instead of "owning The Washington Post", I don't even know what to say.

Ironic that it's the white guy that got attacked though, isn't it?

is there any evidence backing this?

So you mean zero, right? There's no evidence benchmark for a party taking legal action in a civil matter. Saying "you'll be hearing from my lawyer" doesn't strengthen an argument.

>So you mean zero, right? There's no evidence benchmark for a party taking legal action in a civil matter. Saying "you'll be hearing from my lawyer" doesn't strengthen an argument.

In the United States and other common-law legal systems (I don't know about other codes at all) there is the concept of "summary judgement", which would absolutely be invoked if Amazon presented no "no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law" [1]. A summary judgement can be sought with full evidentiary presentation. Amazon's evidence may well be weak, but if they presented "zero evidence" the case wouldn't go to trial at all. It's perfectly reasonable to expect and assume a certain basic level of competence from an established megacorp's legal team. They will have filed a cause of action to which they could at least potentially be entitled relief and assertions of material facts that a jury could at least potentially be convinced by.

----

1: "Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure", https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_56

Presumably Amazon performs some sort of cost/benefit analysis before suing the federal government.

I don't know what evidence they have. Not sure why you decided that it's zero.

I decided based on your statement:

> There's enough evidence for Amazon to take legal action.

The "enough" here is zero. They may have more, but you argued for at least zero.

> The "enough" here is zero.

No, it isn't. Legally it might be zero, but multi-billion dollar companies don't enter legal processes that last years and cost them millions just for the sake of it. This isn't the same as "you'll hear from my lawyer".

>This isn't the same as "you'll hear from my lawyer".

How isn't it? You keep speaking authoritatively on this; where is your evidence? And any derivation of "Amazon is a big company and they don't enter lawsuits they won't win" isn't evidence.

First,

> "Amazon is a big company and they don't enter lawsuits they won't win"

this simply isn't what I said.

Second - my evidence? We're not in court and I'm not trying to prove anything to you. I just explained my thought process - if you disagree or if you think there's a flaw in my reasoning, you can point it out. Or you can move on and ignore what I've written.

>Or you can move on and ignore what I've written.

I tend to have discussions with people online to understand their point of view. Will you indulge me and share why you think there's merit to the case or is this thread just another pair of soapboxes where we each squawk from our megaphones and leave without mutual understanding?

[Disclaimer: I currently work for AWS.]

Let's establish as true a pretty important prior:

1. Anyone who has rightfully-obtained access or knowledge of any such evidence is most likely obligated (legally or otherwise) to keep it secret.

Given #1, asking for evidence isn't the most salient question. Since it can really only be speculation, the most interesting questions probably start with "Given what we know, what is most likely?"

It's a $10 billion contract. It makes sense for Amazon (financially) to protest even if they think there's only a 1% chance that they eventually win.

The original post is a good first source.