House panel urges DOJ to investigate Amazon

STORY: A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday urged the Department of Justice to investigate Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant and some of its top executives of "potentially criminal conduct."

In a letter dated March 9 to Attorney General Merrick Garland, five members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee - including Democrat Jerrold Nadler, who chairs the committee, David Cicilline, Pramila Jayapal and Republicans Ken Buck and Matt Gaetz - said Amazon had engaged in a "pattern and practice of misleading conduct that suggests" it was acting with an improper purpose to influence or obstruct the panel's investigation into competition in digital markets.

The letter added: "We have no choice but to refer this matter to the Department of Justice to investigate whether Amazon and its executives obstructed Congress in violation of applicable federal law."

In response, an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters in an emailed statement: "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."

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The referral to the Justice Department follows a previous warning from members of the committee in October 2021 that accused Amazon's top executives, including founder Jeff Bezos, of either misleading Congress or possibly lying to it about Amazon's business practices.

That letter had come days after a Reuters investigation based on thousands of internal documents that showed Amazon had a formal, clandestine policy of rigging search results in India to favor its own products, as well as copying other sellers' goods – practices Amazon has denied engaging in.