He Wore a “Trump Is a Scab” Shirt at the DNC.
Now a Federal Grand Jury Is
Investigating Him.
The Justice Department has opened a grand jury investigation into UAW International President Shawn Fain, and federal investigators have subpoenaed the union’s own court-appointed watchdog for records, Bloomberg reported July 12, 2026. The subject of the probe: allegations that Fain misused his office to secure financial benefits for his fiancée, then retaliated against the deputy who refused to sign off.
The watchdog being subpoenaed, Neil Barofsky, is not a new or hostile appointment. He is the independent monitor installed under a 2020 federal consent decree — the same oversight structure that has already sent two former UAW presidents to prison. His June 25 report substantiated the core allegation against Fain. Fain calls it “politically charged and false.”
Fain is an unusual figure to draw scrutiny from Donald Trump’s Justice Department: a labor leader who endorsed Kamala Harris and wore that “Trump Is a Scab” shirt on stage at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, then spent 2025 praising the auto tariffs imposed by President Trump (R) and meeting with Republican senators. No criminal charges have been filed. The investigation is pending.
- 4th — UAW president in six years personally linked to a DOJ investigation, after two predecessors' convictions · Source: Bloomberg
- $30,000,000 — Fiat Chrysler's 2020 guilty-plea settlement for illegal payments to UAW officials — the case that created the monitorship now investigating Fain · Source: DOJ
- $550,000 — restitution former UAW president Gary Jones was ordered to pay after his 2021 embezzlement conviction · Source: DOJ
- 6 — candidates on the UAW's fall 2026 presidential ballot — Fain and the deputy he's accused of retaliating against among them · Source: Detroit News
- 0 — criminal charges filed against Fain as of publication; the grand jury investigation remains open and pending · Source: Bloomberg, CNBC
The criminal probe had not previously been reported when Bloomberg’s David Welch broke the story on July 12, citing internal communications inside the union. According to those records, a Jenner & Block attorney representing the monitor’s office emailed Fain, Vice President Rich Boyer, and the UAW’s own lawyers on June 18, 2026, disclosing that the monitor was withholding certain factual findings “out of deference to a Grand Jury investigation DOJ has initiated into that issue,” and that the monitor “intends to comply with the Grand Jury subpoena,” while redacting materials protected by attorney-client privilege.
Steven Fagell of Covington & Burling, outside counsel to the union, drew a careful distinction in a statement to reporters: “the UAW broadly is not the subject of a grand jury investigation.” The target is Fain personally, not the institution. Investigations like this can close without charges — but the timing has stacked scrutiny on Fain from every direction at once, weeks before the union mails its fall presidential ballots: the monitor, the Justice Department, his own election rival, and, as covered below, a faction of dissident locals.
*DOJ INVESTIGATING ALLEGATIONS AGAINST UAW PRESIDENT SHAWN FAIN
“President Fain acted improperly to obtain financial benefits for his fiancée, and Vice President Boyer's failure to approve the bonus may have contributed to Fain's retaliatory action against him.”
UAW Independent Monitor Neil Barofsky, report to U.S. District Judge David Lawson · June 25, 2026
The allegations trace to April 2024, when the sister of Fain’s fiancée, Keesha McConaghie — a financial analyst at the Stellantis National Training Center, not a UAW employee — was injured on the job at a Stellantis plant. According to Barofsky’s findings, Fain personally called Boyer and other UAW-Stellantis Department staff seeking preferential handling of the injury claim outside normal channels. Separately, Fain sought a bonus for McConaghie that Boyer, then head of the union’s Stellantis Department, declined to approve. The following month, Fain removed Boyer from that post — which oversees roughly 40,000 members at Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram plants — citing seven separate performance complaints.
Barofsky filed his report with the federal judge overseeing the consent decree one week after the UAW’s 39th Constitutional Convention. It found that none of Fain’s seven stated reasons “justified” removing Boyer, and concluded that Boyer’s refusal to approve the bonus “may have contributed” to his removal — the pattern the consent decree defines as retaliation. It is not the monitor’s first adverse finding involving Fain’s leadership team: earlier reports have also flagged obstruction of document production, deleted text messages, and retaliation against Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock.
Fain’s national profile was built on moments like this one — a Rust Belt union president who made himself a Democratic-aligned political figure by taking on a former president by name, on the biggest stage his party could offer him.
Fain rejects the monitor’s findings outright and has counter-accused the man now positioned to unseat him. “Rich Boyer has fed the monitor false allegations about me,” Fain said, “and is now trying to weaponize these bogus allegations to steal the upcoming UAW election.” He has also turned on Barofsky himself, tying the monitor’s scrutiny to the union’s 2024 resolution backing a Gaza ceasefire — a vote that reportedly prompted Barofsky to personally push back on the union’s position at the time.
UAW's Shawn Fain Says Gaza Ceasefire Stance Fueled DOJ Probe. The Justice Department has opened a grand jury investigation into allegations that UAW President Shawn Fain improperly used his authority to benefit his fiancée and retaliated against union official Rich Boyer.
“Neil Barofsky has a political grudge against me because the UAW took an anti-war stance about what was happening in Gaza. The most reasonable conclusion is that he is playing political games and abusing his power.”
UAW International President Shawn Fain · statement, June 2026
Fain says he has retained a law firm and is weighing his own options. “What the Monitor is doing is wrong, it’s unfair to the UAW and to you as members,” he told the membership, “and my lawyers are looking at any and all legal options I can pursue to make it stop.” Boyer, for his part, has not publicly responded beyond his filings with the monitor; he did not respond to reporters’ requests for comment.
It is worth being precise about what oversight structure is now scrutinizing Fain, because it is not a manufactured or novel one. In December 2020, the Justice Department settled a years-long corruption investigation that charged fifteen people, including two men who would later be convicted as former UAW presidents. Fiat Chrysler pleaded guilty to a single federal count and agreed to pay $30,000,000, admitting its executives had funneled more than $3.5 million in illegal gifts and payments to UAW officials. As part of the settlement, a federal judge approved a consent decree in January 2021 installing Barofsky as independent monitor for a six-year term — the same monitorship whose subpoena made news this month.
Gary Jones, UAW president from 2018–19, pleaded guilty to embezzlement and conspiring to defraud the IRS. Sentenced June 10, 2021: 28 months in prison, $550,000 restitution to the UAW, $42,000 to the IRS, $151,377 in forfeiture, and a $10,000 fine. Source: DOJ.
Dennis Williams, UAW president from 2014–18, also pleaded guilty to embezzlement. Sentenced May 11, 2021: 21 months in prison, $132,000 restitution, and a $10,000 fine. Source: DOJ.
Both men spent embezzled union dues on personal travel, golf, liquor, and luxury lodging. Fain is now the fourth UAW president in six years personally connected to a DOJ inquiry.
Fain was elected in March 2023 on a reform platform — “No Concessions, No Corruption, No Tiers” — in the union’s first direct, one-member-one-vote presidential election, itself a product of the same consent decree. He led the 2023 Stand-Up Strike against the Big Three automakers to contracts worth roughly four times the prior four-year agreements. That record is exactly why the current allegations land as a genuine reversal rather than a continuation of the old pattern: the reformer elected to end the corruption era is now the subject investigators are asking the reform monitor about.
Nothing here is resolved. No indictment has been returned, and a grand jury subpoena is an investigative step, not a finding of guilt — Fain is entitled to the presumption of innocence like any other subject of a federal inquiry. But the political and institutional pressure on him is compounding from multiple directions simultaneously. The union’s 39th Constitutional Convention nominated a six-candidate field for the fall International Executive Board election — Fain, Boyer, Tricia Geiger, Brian Keller, Will Lehman, and Greg Mooney — and ballots are set to mail in August 2026. Separately, a group of dissident UAW locals pursued internal proceedings seeking Fain’s removal in 2025; those efforts stalled procedurally but have not been formally closed.
BREAKING: DOJ launches grand jury investigation into United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain.
The irony of who is asking the questions is not lost on anyone watching. Less than two years after Fain stood on a Democratic convention stage and declared that Donald Trump “doesn’t give a damn about the working class,” it is Trump’s own Justice Department whose grand jury has subpoenaed Fain’s union watchdog.
A federal grand jury has subpoenaed the UAW’s own court-appointed monitor over allegations that Shawn Fain misused his office for his fiancée’s benefit, then pushed out the deputy who said no — the same oversight structure that already sent two of his predecessors to prison. Fain denies it all, blames his election rival and a monitor he says holds a political grudge, and has hired lawyers to fight back. No charges have been filed. Ballots mail in August, and by then the DOJ, the monitor, and 400,000 UAW members may each have reached a different verdict before any court does.
