IG Reveals Ethical Violations, Potential White House Influence in JEDI Award

The Department of Defense's inspector general said it could not determine the Trump administration's influence on the Joint Enterprise Infrastructure contract award as senior agency officials were barred from commenting.

Trump allegedly pressured the Pentagon to award the potentially $10B JEDI contract to Microsoft instead of its rival Amazon.

In a 300-page investigation, the IG claimed multiple ethical violations and assertions of "presidential communications privilege" from the Pentagon's general counsel.

The investigator also reviewed the department's decision to award JEDI to a single commercial cloud provider, its technological requirements and its source selection process, Nextgov reported Wednesday.

Amazon recently filed a legal protest against DOD's awarding process, with President Donald Trump as the central figure.

With JEDI, which is among the Pentagon's largest contracts, officials aim to connect military systems across the world and unify them under a single architecture. 

On October 29, Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy said the department took steps to ensure the award was free from political influence, including Trump's.

Some have claimed that Trump wanted to keep JEDI from Amazon because of his animosity toward its CEO and founder, Jeff Bezos.