Amazon could be open to testify before House Judiciary Committee

As pressure mounts, Amazon is looking closer to sending Jeff Bezos or retailer executives before the House Judiciary Committee to discuss its private label practices, per a report in The Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos.

The newspaper obtained a letter from Amazon’s lawyers to the committee initiating questions on how Amazon could respond to the committee under COVID-19 health and safety guidelines, and the letter stresses that “other senior executives now run the businesses that are the actual subject of the Committee’s investigation,” hinting that Bezos probably isn’t the man to interview but not ruling him out.

The Wall Street Journal just last week reported that investigators in California are looking into business practices by Amazon and that the European Union’s antitrust regulator is expected to file a formal complaint against the tech giant, increasing pressure on Amazon to respond.

The WSJ first reported an investigative piece looking into how Amazon uses third-party seller data to give its private label products a competitive advantage online, which fired up the U.S. House Judiciary Committee to open an antitrust probe and request Bezos to testify before the committee. Amazon wrote back that it has been cooperating with the U.S. government and that it is not doing anything out of bounds, at least compared to any other brick-and-mortar retailer. This letter from Amazon’s lawyers points to an openness to go before the committee.

Read The Washington Post article here.