The White House’s stonewalling of an investigation into the Pentagon’s JEDI cloud contract has prompted renewed allegations of bias from Amazon as it protests the deal, but experts say the company faces a steep climb to show the deal was unfair.
But while Trump’s efforts to “[go] out of his way, very publicly, to criticize [Amazon]” have made Amazon’s allegations of bias the most prominent part of its Court of Federal Claims protest over JEDI, and the company might try to use the OIG report to help support that argument, showing bias requires a showing of bad faith, according to McCarter & English government contracts practice co-chair Franklin Turner.
“Bad faith is a very steep walk uphill in terms of an argument, because government officials are always assumed to act in good faith,” he said.