Former US Marine Corp general and Defense Secretary James Mattis, was a favorite among conservatives and rank-and-file Marines for his plain, no-BS manner and strong leadership, and seemed a natural choice for President Trump’s administration.
He served the post of Defense Secretary for only two years, resigning abruptly on December 31, 218 after reportedly disagreeing with Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria.
Just one day after Mattis’ departure from the Pentagon, however, Trump criticized Mattis’ performance as Sec Def, claiming he had “essentially fired him.”
Fellowship of the Minds Blog, however, explains that there appears to be more to the story:
My post of May 24, 2019 was on what may be the real reason why Mattis resigned or was fired: At least seven months before he resigned, Mattis had put together a plan to challenge Trump in the 2020 Republican primary elections.
Now, we are told by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that, in addition to being disloyal, Mattis is also corrupt. As defense secretary, Mattis made a secret, no-bid $10 billion Pentagon contract with Amazon.com.
On June 14, Carlson said:
“The Department of Defense exists to protect America from foreign threats and does a great job of that, thank God, but it’s also a massive consumer of tax dollars — the biggest, really. And for that reason, concerns about corruption are always there.
There’s reason to believe that over the past couple of years, some at the Pentagon had worked to enrich Amazon, already the world’s richest company. In 2017, the Pentagon announced a $10 billion cloud-computing contract. According to critics, the contract wasn’t actually competitive and was designed from the very start to be fulfilled by Amazon and only by Amazon. Several of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ aides had prior professional ties to Amazon. A key official working on the Pentagon’s cloud computing program was carrying out secret job negotiations with Amazon even as he worked on the Pentagon’s program.
And we can report exclusively tonight on this program that in March 2017, before the cloud computing contract was announced, [Defense] Secretary Mattis had a secret dinner in London with Amazon’s top cloud sales executive Teresa Carlson.”
Carlson then interviewed Republican Congressman Mark Meadows (NC), the chair of the conservative Freedom Caucus and one of Trump’s strongest allies in Congress.
Fellowship of the Minds summarizes what they discussed:
• The Pentagon’s contract with Amazon, “the largest of its kind ever,” is not yet “in place”.
• Rep. Meadows said the $10 billion contract “was designed” to be given to only one vendor — Amazon — with “perhaps, inside negotiations”. Meadows alluded to the Pentagon official who was carrying out secret job negotiations with Amazon as “now employed with Amazon”. Meadows calls the contract “inside baseball that enriches certain individuals“.
• Tucker Carlson emphasized the fact that the Pentagon tried to keep secret then-Defense Secretary’s Mattis’ meeting with the Amazon official “like some national security secret,” which it is not. Carlson asks: “Why wouldn’t they be open about that?”.
• Rep. Meadows said Pentagon’s “procurement process should be open and transparent and competitive…. Somebody as high as General Mattis being with a potential bidder on a contract of $10 billion, and even beyond that there are some suggestions the Department of Defense Inspector General is looking at this in terms of possible conflict-of-interest. So whether it be with General Mattis or with other individuals, what we want to make sure is that the American people get the best value for the dollar, and you can’t do that if you’re designing a contract to go just to one bidder.”