Amazon wants to depose President Donald Trump. The $280 billion multi-national online retailer and technology company has told a federal court it would like to depose the president, along with Defense Secretary Mark Esper and former Defense Secretary James Mattis, CNBC reports.
At stake is a $10 billion cloud-computing contract. Trump has a very public feud with Amazon and its founder, who also owns the Washington Post. The president has called the top newspaper “the enemy of the people.”
The Pentagon late last year awarded the contract to Microsoft. Amazon maintains Trump exerted “improper pressure” and filed a lawsuit, citing Trump’s “personal vendetta against Mr. Bezos, Amazon, and the Washington Post.”
Trump has called Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who is an actual billionaire, “Jeff Bozo,” and has called his newspaper, which he holds privately, “the Amazon Washington Post.”
Amazon’s lawsuit states: “The question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of DoD to pursue his own personal and political ends.” It adds that Trump views Bezos as his “political enemy.”
DoD photo by Lisa Ferdinando
Image via U.S. Secretary of Defense/Flickr and a CC license