Welcome back to this proerotic, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter

on the collision of tech, business, and politics. I'm Jemper Mack. On today's show, Mobile's

mega merger gets court approval and AOC gets a challenger. But first, Amazon raises the temperature

on Trump. So you might remember

that the Pentagon last October awarded a massive $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft,

even though almost everyone had expected it would be awarded to Amazon. This is the so-called

Jedi contract, and Amazon was none too pleased to lose, particularly after a speechwriter

for former defense secretary Jim Mattis wrote in a book that Trump had ordered Mattis to

quote, screw Amazon on the deal. So one month after the DOD decision, Amazon filed a protest in

the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Then one month after that, Amazon made public a complaint alleging that Trump's

private and public attacks on Amazon helped lead to the DOD decision, with Amazon requesting

a reevaluation of the proposals. In short, the company argued that Trump was using the DOD

budget, quote, for his personal and political ends. Now, fast forward to yesterday when we all got to

see a redacted public motion to depose Trump and current DOD secretary Mark Esper, the guy who

was in place when the final decision on Jedi was made. Amazon basically wants to question Trump

about his communications with Esper, to learn more about Mattis's departure, and to uncover

any communications between the White House and DOD with Microsoft, to learn more about Mattis's departure, and to uncover any communications

between the White House and DoD with Microsoft, Oracle, and other big tech companies.

All of this is a bit reminiscent of AT&T complaining about Trump interference in its takeover

of Time Warner, which the Justice Department challenged but eventually lost.

The difference on that case is that the judge never allowed questions about

Trump's influence, saying it was tangential. This time, though, Amazon is arguing that that

...