Sally Donnelly, a former senior adviser to Defense Secretary James Mattis received payments from the sale of her consulting firm that worked with Amazon’s cloud computing arm even as the Pentagon put together a $10 billion contract that some claim favors the tech giant, The Daily Caller is reporting.
Financial disclosure filings by Donnelly do not clearly state she was receiving payments from the buyer of her firm during her time at the Pentagon, the website noted.
“It sounds that she was not fully paid off, which would be a violation of conflicts of interest if she took any official action that affected that business,” government affairs lobbyist Craig Holman of Public Citizen, a liberal watchdog, said.
SBD Advisors was founded by Donnelly in 2012. It is described as a company specializing in facilitating “engagements between the technology and defense sectors.”
The Daily Caller reported she had consulted for Amazon’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, a client of SBD Advisors, before she entered government service.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon moved ahead with plans to issue a $10 billion, single-vendor commercial cloud contract known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), according to The Daily Caller.
In March — just two days before Donnelly left the Defense Department — the Pentagon asked for a proposal for JEDI, which some in the industry claimed provided an unfair advantage to Amazon Web Services, the website reported.
A Defense Department spokesman said Donnelly’s duties “did not involve substantive JEDI program participation.”
Donnelly had sold her stake in SBD Advisors before going to work for the government, but did not receive full payment until months into her stay at the Defense Department, The Daily Caller said.
Her attorney, Michael Levy, maintained Donnelly adhered to all ethical and legal obligations.
Meanwhile, the Defense Department has stuck with its provisions in the JEDI contract proposals. Amazon is still seen as the favorite to win the deal, The Daily Caller said.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.