Microsoft’s $10 Billion Worth Contract with Pentagon Halted by Court

Amazon Inc. (AMZN) has been granted its request by U.S judge Patricia Campbell-Smith to temporarily halt execution of the contract between competitor Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and U.S. Department of Defense.

Last year, Microsoft won a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the U.S Department of Defense, however, weeks after the deal had been closed, Amazon filed a lawsuit claiming awarding of the deal was interfered with by President Donald Trump.

Amazon claims the contract was irrationally awarded following influence from President Trump who had publicly ridiculed Amazon’s Chief and founder Jeff Bezos severally.

“The Defense Department’s decision was full of egregious errors which were a result of improper pressure from President Donald Trump, who launched repeated public and behind the scenes attacks to steer the contract away from Amazon to harm his perceived political enemy Bezos” read part of the lawsuit.

While granting the temporary injunction, the Judge ordered Amazon to post $42 million in an event which turns out this injunction was wrongfully issued.

U.S Department of Defense was quick to express its disappointment by this ruling considering they were to start work on the contract on Friday- just the following day the injunction was issued.

” The Pentagon believes the actions taken in this litigation have unnecessarily delayed implementing DoD’s modernization strategy and deprived our warfighters of a set of capabilities they urgently need,” said Defense Department spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Carver.