President Donald Trump said Thursday that the administration will "take a very long look" at a massive multibillion-dollar contract the Pentagon is preparing to award for a cloud computing system, citing "tremendous complaints" he's heard about the process.
Amazon Web Services Inc., a division of Amazon, and Microsoft Corp. are finalists for the contract estimated to be worth up to $10 billion over a decade.
Trump said during an unrelated event at the White House that companies that are no longer in the running to land the deal, known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, have lodged complaints about the process.
Republican lawmakers troubled by the Pentagon's handling of the contract also took their concerns directly to the president.
"I'm getting tremendous complaints about the contract with the Pentagon and with Amazon," Trump said when he was asked about the matter during an Oval Office appearance with the Dutch prime minister. "They're saying it wasn't competitively bid."
"We're looking at it very seriously," the president said. "It's a very big contract, one of the biggest ever given having to do with the cloud and having to do with a lot of other things."
Trump said some of the "greatest companies in the world" were among those complaining about Amazon, and he said the administration will look "very closely" at the contract because "I have had very few things where there's been such complaining."
Trump is a critic of Amazon, the e-commerce retailer owned by Jeff Bezos. Bezos also owns The Washington Post, and Trump has criticized the paper's coverage of the administration.
The president's comments injected new uncertainty into a project the Defense Department has said is vital to maintaining the U.S. military's technological advantage over adversaries. Whichever company wins the contract will have the monumental task of storing and processing vast amounts of classified data. The Pentagon says it will enable troops to advance the use of artificial intelligence in warfare.
Oracle and IBM were eliminated from an earlier round of competition, leaving Amazon and Microsoft as the two finalists.
Amazon and Microsoft declined to comment Thursday on Trump's remarks. Oracle didn't immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
IBM said in a statement Thursday that it "has long raised serious concerns about the structure of the JEDI procurement" and continues to believe the Defense Department "would be best served by a multi-cloud strategy" involving multiple cloud systems operated by different companies.
IBM did not say whether it had shared those concerns with the White House. Both IBM and Oracle formally protested the process last year.
A federal judge last week tossed out a second challenge by Oracle alleging that the bidding process was rigged in Amazon's favor, and some in Congress have expressed concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida sent a letter last week to White House national security adviser John Bolton asking that the Pentagon delay awarding the contract, contending that the process suffered from a "lack of competition" and the use of "arbitrary criteria and standards for bidders" that could waste taxpayer dollars and "fail to provide our warfighters with the best technology solutions."
Rubio had also expressed concerns about plans to award the contract to a single vendor.
The Pentagon has said it plans to award the contract as soon as Aug. 23.
Rep. James Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said Thursday he has full confidence in the Defense Department's cloud strategy and that it's important that the project be allowed to move forward.
Langevin said in an emailed statement that it would be "wholly inappropriate" for Trump or any member of Congress to interfere in the procurement process, especially since the courts and the Government Accountability Office - the watchdog for Congress - have rejected challenges to the Pentagon's plans.
Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a defense-oriented think tank based in Virginia, said it's not unusual for Trump to publicly raise concerns about a defense equipment contract, as Trump did weeks before he took office over the contract with Boeing for an updated version of Air Force One.
But Goure said it's rare for Trump to actually reverse a Pentagon decision, especially one backed by a legal opinion.
"I would be incredibly surprised if the president decided to unilaterally cancel this," said Goure, whose institute receives funding from Amazon. "I think once he sees the process, or the process is explained to him and the document is explained to him, I think this will all go away."
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States carried out a lightning military strike on Venezuela early Saturday, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and spiriting them out of the country. President Donald Trump said the U.S. is “going to run” Venezuela until a transition of power can occur and the U.S. will tap the country's vast oil reserves as part of a rebuilding effort.
American officials say Maduro and his wife will face narco-terrorism charges in U.S. courts.
The overnight operation left Venezuela reeling, with its leadership uncertain and details of casualties and the impact on its military still to emerge. Countries across the region and the wider world were absorbing the destabilizing implications of the apparently unilateral U.S. action.
Here’s what we know — and what we don’t.
Explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, early Saturday. At least seven blasts were heard in an attack that lasted less than 30 minutes. The targets appeared to include military infrastructure. Smoke was seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas and another military installation in the capital was without power.
Venezuelan ruling party leader Nahum Fernández told The Associated Press that Maduro and Flores were at their home within the Ft. Tiuna military installation outside Caracas when they were captured.
Venezuelan officials said people had been killed, but the scale of casualties was unclear.
The attack followed months of escalating pressure by the Trump administration, which has built up naval forces in the waters off South America and since early September has carried out deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean. Last week the U.S. struck Venezuelan soil with a CIA drone strike at a docking area alleged to have been used by drug cartels.
Trump said during a news conference Saturday the U.S. would run the country and gestured to officials arrayed behind, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and said they’d be the ones doing it “for a period of time.”
Trump claimed the American presence was already in place, though there were no immediate signs of this. He suggested the U.S. would use revenues from oil sales to pay for running the country.
“We’re going to get reimbursed for everything that we spend,” he said.
Trump claimed that Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez had been sworn in as president shortly before he spoke to reporters and added she had spoken with Rubio.
“She is essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again. Very simple,” Trump said.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on social network X that Maduro and Flores had both been indicted in the Southern District of New York and “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”
Maduro was indicted in March 2020, during Trump’s first term, but the indictment against Flores was not previously made public.
In the indictment made public on Saturday, Maduro is charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
U.S. authorities accused Maduro of leading a “a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking.” The indictment alleges the drug trafficking “enriched and entrenched Venezuela’s political and military elite.”
Authorities estimate that as much as 250 tons of cocaine were trafficked through Venezuela by 2020, according to the indictment. The drugs were moved on go-fast vessels, fishing boats and container ships or by plane from clandestine airstrips, authorities allege.
Trump said Maduro and his wife are aboard a U.S. warship and will face prosecution in New York.
Trump gave some details of the operation during a Saturday morning interview on “Fox and Friends.”
He said a few U.S. members of the operation were injured but he believed no one was killed.
He said Maduro was “highly guarded” in a presidential palace akin to a “fortress” and the Venezuelan leader tried to get to a safe room but wasn’t able to get there in time.
Trump said U.S. forces practiced the operation ahead of time on a replica building, and the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights in Caracas,” although he didn’t detail how they accomplished that.
Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, also offered some details of the operation, saying some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed.
The U.S. does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, and the legal implications of the strike under U.S. law were not immediately clear.
The Trump administration maintains that Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela and claims he has effectively turned Venezuela into a criminal enterprise at the service of drug traffickers and terrorist groups.
Mike Lee, a U.S. senator from Utah, said on X that the action “likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack.”
But some Democrats were more critical.
Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, said in a statement, “President Trump’s unauthorized military attack on Venezuela to arrest Maduro — however terrible he is — is a sickening return to a day when the United States asserted the right to dominate the internal political affairs of all nations in the Western Hemisphere.”
Maduro’s government accused the United States of an “imperialist attack” on civilian and military installations and urged citizens to take to the streets.
Armed individuals and uniformed members of a civilian militia took to the streets of a Caracas neighborhood long considered a stronghold of the ruling party. But in other areas of the city, the streets remained empty hours after the attack. Parts of the city remained without power, but vehicles moved freely.
Venezuela’s neighbor Colombia sent troops to the border and anticipated an influx of refugees.
Latin American leaders were sharply divided over the strikes. Trump’s right-wing ally President Javier Milei of Argentina celebrated the operation, while leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva condemned American actions and warned of the sharp repercussions of past American interventions in Latin America.
Cuba, a supporter of the Maduro government and a longtime adversary of the United States, urged the international community to respond to what President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez called “the criminal attack.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the attack and capture of Maduro would be “an unacceptable infringement on the sovereignty of an independent state.”
U.S. allies in Europe — critical of Maduro but mindful of international law — offered muted responses as they scrambled to understand the scale and implications of the attack.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc “has repeatedly stated that Mr Maduro lacks legitimacy and has defended a peaceful transition. Under all circumstances, the principles of international law and the U.N. Charter must be respected. We call for restraint.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he had not spoken to Trump about the attack and stressed that “the U.K. was not involved in any way.” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Spain was “conducting a thorough monitoring of the events in Venezuela” and called for “de-escalation and responsibility.”
Lawless reported from London. Associated Press Writer Danica Kirka in London contributed to this story.
FILE - President Nicolas Maduro acknowledges supporters alongside first lady Cilia Flores during his closing election campaign rally in Caracas, Venezuela, July 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, File)
Pro-government armed civilians patrol in La Guaira, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that President Nicolás Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro embrace in downtown Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country. (AP Photo/Cristian Hernandez)
Men watch smoke rising from a dock after explosions were heard at La Guaira port, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Smoke raises at La Carlota airport after explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
