By John D. McKinnon and Kate O'Keeffe 

WASHINGTON -- Pentagon lawyers filed a new motion Tuesday in the legal battle over a military cloud-computing contract worth up to $10 billion, marking a tactical shift that could signal more trouble for a procurement process which Amazon.com Inc. has been favored to win.

In a sealed motion, lawyers representing the Defense Department asked federal judges to stay a lawsuit that Amazon rival Oracle Corp. filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims alleging the procurement process had been unfairly skewed to favor Amazon.

While the Pentagon's motives weren't immediately clear, the request for a stay could eventually lead to further delays or other hurdles in the procurement process.

The Pentagon told the court its motion wasn't opposed. The lack of opposition from Oracle suggests the motion could be in line with that company's interests.

The Oracle suit focuses on an alleged conflict of interest involving former federal employee Deap Ubhi, who led the procurement process for the cloud contract through the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program, known as JEDI. Mr. Ubhi worked at Amazon both before and after his 2016-2017 stint in the U.S. government.

Amazon didn't immediately respond to requests for comment, but in the past the company has said the claims are without merit. Mr. Ubhi couldn't be reached for comment.

The government had previously defended the procurement process, but recently indicated in court filings that it would take another look at conflict of interest claims.

Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com and Kate O'Keeffe at kathryn.okeeffe@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 19, 2019 13:50 ET (18:50 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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