U.S. News

A Federal Grand Jury Is Investigating the UAW President Who Called Trump a Scab

By Erica Coleman · July 13, 2026

Shawn Fain ran for president of the United Auto Workers as a reformer. A federal grand jury is now examining whether he governed the union much the same way his predecessors did.

The Department of Justice has opened a grand jury investigation into allegations that Fain pressured a senior union official to secure financial benefits for his fiancée and her sister, then retaliated against the official when he refused, according to internal union documents reviewed by Reuters. Bloomberg first reported the probe Sunday, citing emails sent to Fain, UAW Vice President Rich Boyer, and lawyers for the union.

The specifics, as laid out in reports by court-appointed federal monitor Neil Barofsky, center on two claims: that Fain pushed for a financial bonus for his fiancée through a Stellantis training center, and that he sought a worker’s compensation claim for her sister. When Boyer declined to approve the bonus, Fain allegedly stripped him of his role as chief negotiator with Stellantis — a move the monitor’s office found was retaliatory rather than performance-based.

“We are not publishing the details of our factual findings on this issue at this time out of deference to a Grand Jury investigation DOJ has initiated into that issue.” The monitor’s lead counsel wrote in a June 18 email reviewed by Reuters.

Fain has called the allegations “false” and accused both Boyer and the monitor of playing politics ahead of the UAW’s upcoming internal election this fall, where both men are running competing slates for executive leadership. He told Bloomberg he retained outside counsel and is “looking at any and all legal options” to fight the investigation.

The timing is genuinely bad for the union. The UAW has been under federal oversight since a 2020 consent decree that resolved what was, at the time, one of the largest labor corruption scandals in modern American history. More than a dozen officials were convicted of embezzling millions in member dues — spending the money on luxury goods, golf trips, and personal expenses. Two former UAW presidents went to prison. The monitor was appointed specifically to prevent this from happening again.

Fain’s election in 2023 was supposed to be the clean break. He was the first UAW president elected by a direct vote of the membership rather than by delegates, and he used his outsider status to negotiate the most aggressive contract wins the union had seen in decades — including the 2023 Stand Up Strike that won double-digit raises from all three Detroit automakers. His speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, where he unfurled a red T-shirt reading “Trump Is a Scab,” made him one of the most visible labor leaders in the country.

Now the same federal apparatus that cleaned house after the last scandal is examining whether the new leadership repeated the pattern. Fortune reported that a lawyer representing the UAW said the union itself is not the subject of the grand jury probe — the investigation centers on Fain personally. But the distinction may not matter much to the roughly 400,000 UAW members watching their president face the same kind of scrutiny that sent his predecessors to federal prison.

No charges have been filed. The investigation could end without any being sought. But with the union’s internal election approaching and a fresh round of contract negotiations on the horizon, the grand jury’s work is already reshaping the politics inside America’s most prominent industrial union.