House Judiciary Asks DOJ to Probe Potential Amazon Obstruction

DOJ should investigate whether Amazon obstructed Congress or violated the law during the House Judiciary Committee’s tech competition investigation, a bipartisan group of committee members wrote the department Wednesday. Amazon engaged in a pattern of misleading behavior that “appeared designed to influence, obstruct, or impede the committee’s 16-month investigation,” they wrote. Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., signed the letter with House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline, D-R.I.; ranking member Ken Buck, R-Colo.; and Reps. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. Credible reporting shows Amazon uses third-party seller data in competition with those sellers, despite contrary testimony from company executives, they said. The company “attempted to clean up the inaccurate testimony through ever-shifting explanations of its internal policies and denials of the investigative reports,” the committee said. An Amazon spokesperson emailed: “There's no factual basis for this, as demonstrated in the huge volume of information we've provided over several years of good faith cooperation with this investigation.” DOJ didn’t comment.