Trump ties Camp Lejeune toxic water settlements to GOP midterm results

President Trump told an audience in North Carolina that if Republicans retain control of Congress in the upcoming November midterm elections, he would direct the Justice Department to quickly settle “all remaining legitimate claims” related to contaminated water at the nearby Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, where thousands of cases remain unresolved.

“If we don’t win, there’s no money,” Trump said Tuesday night at a campaign rally in Greenville. “If we do win, you’re getting it. It’s going to be finally over with, that nightmare that’s been going on for so many years. We will never abandon the heroes who served America.”

Camp Lejeune is notorious for its toxic water, which service members and their families drank and bathed in from 1953 to 1987. The water supply was contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE), a colorless solvent that was widely used in industry to clean metal starting in the 1920s. It can remain in groundwater for long periods of time and sicken those who are exposed to it with serious illnesses including cancer and Parkinson’s disease.  

Though TCE contaminated the base’s water supply for nearly 30 years, military officials did not discover the water quality was compromised until 1982. 

The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, passed in 2022, allows individuals to seek benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs or sue the government for illness caused by the contaminated water. 

The base is now at the center of dozens of civil lawsuits against the U.S. government for the hazardous conditions there, with the first trial to start next week. 

In lieu of litigation, the Justice Department and the Navy in 2023 offered its Elective Option settlement program to provide faster payouts to people with qualifying illnesses, with the Justice Department in March vowing to speed up settlement offers.

But the program, which includes more than 400,000 unsettled claims, has its own set of issues as several claimants have argued the government denied them compensation or offered less than they should have received.

Conservative activist Laura Loomer, a defender of Trump, on Monday accused Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, the man overseeing the settlement efforts, of “sending these veterans insulting lowball offers designed to insult and belittle their suffering.”

“This is a political disaster waiting to happen,” she wrote on X. “Let’s be clear: Democrats are 100% going to weaponize this against President Trump and try to hurt him with veterans heading into the midterms in two weeks.” 

On Tuesday Trump claimed that his administration had delivered $1 billion in cash settlements to veterans and families affected by the contamination.

He added that if GOP candidates “win the House and the Senate, I am directing the Department of Justice to settle all remaining legitimate claims as soon as possible.”

“We don’t want to give any to the trial lawyers. We’ve given a lot of money to – no trial lawyers, if you don’t mind — we want it to go to the families, not to the lawyers.”