• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 9, 2022

Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee are seeking a criminal probe of Amazon over statements the company made to the committee during its recent investigation of competition in digital markets.

“Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices. For this, it must be held accountable,” House Judiciary chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) and four other Congress members say in a letter sent Wednesday to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Nadler and the other officials specifically accuse Amazon of misrepresenting its practices regarding how it used data obtained from sellers on its platform.

“In its first appearance before the committee during the investigation, Amazon lied through a senior executive’s sworn testimony that Amazon did not use any of the troves of data it had collected on its third-party sellers to compete with them. But credible investigative reporting showed otherwise,” the letter states.

In 2019, the House Judiciary Committee launched an extensive investigation into practices of the largest tech companies, including Amazon. That investigation, which lasted 16 months, resulted in a 450-page majority staff report that accused Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google of maintaining market dominance by copying or acquiring competitive rivals, and engaging in “self-preferencing, predatory pricing, or exclusionary conduct.”

In Wednesday's letter, Nadler and the other lawmakers cite reports in The Wall Street Journal and Reuters as sources for the claim that Amazon, contrary to its testimony to the committee, drew on information gleaned from third-party sellers when developing and marketing its private-label products.

Nadler and the others also accuse Amazon of lying about prioritizing its own products in the search results. The lawmakers referenced an October 14, 2021 piece in The Markup, which reported that Amazon preferences its own brands and exclusive products in the search results.

The lawmakers add that Amazon later “stonewalled” the committee by “offering conclusory denials,” while failing to provide business records that would back up the company's statements.

“Without producing any evidence to the contrary, Amazon has left standing what appear to be false and misleading statements to the committee,” the letter states. “It has refused to turn over business documents or communications that would either corroborate its claims or correct the record. And it appears to have done so to conceal the truth about its use of third-party sellers’ data to advantage its private-label business and its preferencing of private-label products in search results.”

An Amazon spokesperson responded by stating: “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.”