Members of the House Judiciary Committee said Friday they want to hear from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos about whether an Amazon lawyer made “criminally false statements” in his congressional testimony last year.
The letter to Mr. Bezos, signed by members of both parties, warned they will subpoena him if he does not voluntarily testify before the panel.
In July 2019, an Amazon lawyer told the panel’s antitrust subcommittee that the company doesn’t use data from individuals who sell products on its website to develop competing products.
Amazon has long been suspected of using data from third-parties’ marketing products on their site to reduce competition. If true, the practice would run afoul of federal antitrust laws.
An explosive report by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday directly contradicts the lawyer’s testimony. The paper, citing Amazon employees, reported the tech giant does use data from independent businesses to create competing products.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon used data from independent businesses that sell products on the company’s website to develop competing products and reduce competition.
“If the reporting in the Wall Street Journal article is accurate, then statements made to the committee about the company’s business practices appear to be misleading, possibly criminally false or perjurious,” the committee wrote in its letter.
The panel demanded Mr. Bezos address the issue in testimony before lawmakers.
“We expect you, as Chief Executive Officer of Amazon, to testify before the Committee,” the letter said. “It is vital to the committee, as part of its critical work investigating and understanding competition issues in the digital marketplace, that Amazon respond to these and other critical questions concerning competition issues in digital markets.”
The letter was signed by multiple lawmakers including Chairman Jerrold Nadler, New York Democrat, Reps. David Cicilline, Rhode Island Democrat, F. James Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin Republican, and Matt Gaetz, Florida Republican.
An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on whether Mr. Bezos will testify before the panel, but pledged to investigate the allegations raised in the Wall Street Journal story.
“As we told the Wall Street Journal and explained in our testimony, we strictly prohibit employees from using non-public, seller-specific data to determine which private label products to launch,” the spokesperson said. “While we don’t believe these claims made in the Journal story are accurate, we take these allegations very seriously and have launched an internal investigation.”
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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