The Pentagon is preparing for the possibility that it will have to move on without the long-fought JEDI cloud-computing contract, as an impending court decision threatens to leave the embattled procurement even more bogged down in litigation than it already is.
“The government is making a not-so-thinly-veiled threat that it may well choose to jettison all or part of the procurement if it is forced to participate in the depositions of former president Trump and other top DoD officials,” said Franklin Turner, a government contracts attorney with the law firm McCarter & English.
Turner said the Biden administration could add an extra wrinkle to JEDI’s already-complicated path.
“This procurement has been under a national litigation microscope since Day 1, and we have a new sheriff in town in the form of the Biden administration,” Turner said. “While it would be unusual, it is entirely possible that the government decides to go back to the drawing board on this one.”