President Donald Trump had told former Defense Secretary James Mattis to "screw Amazon" out of the $10 billion cybersecurity contract known as JEDI, according to a new book, CNBC reported.
Former Mattis speechwriter Guy Snodgrass' book "Holding The Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon With Secretary Mattis" detailed Mattis' rejection of the Trump directive against Amazon.
"Relaying the story to us during Small Group, Mattis said, 'We're not going to do that. This will be done by the book, both legally and ethically,'" Snodgrass wrote, per reports of the book due to be released Tuesday.
The Pentagon announced Friday the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) would be awarded to Microsoft.
"We're surprised about this conclusion," an Amazon Web Services spokesperson told CNBC via email Friday. "AWS is the clear leader in cloud computing, and a detailed assessment purely on the comparative offerings clearly lead to a different conclusion. We remain deeply committed to continuing to innovate for the new digital battlefield where security, efficiency, resiliency, and scalability of resources can be the difference between success and failure."
The deal is capped at $10 billion over 10 years, per the report, and has been under scrutiny by President Trump, who has been at odds with Amazon, its founder Jeff Bezos, and the news paper he owns, The Washington Post.
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