By Kalea Hall and Nora Eckert
DETROIT, July 12 (Reuters) – The Department of Justice is probing allegations that United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain took actions to improperly benefit his fiancée and retaliated against another senior union member who objected to the actions, according to internal union documents reviewed by Reuters.
The lead counsel for the federal watchdog appointed to oversee union activities informed Fain and the senior union member, Rich Boyer, last month that the DOJ had initiated a grand jury investigation into matters detailed in the monitor’s reports, including those involving Fain and his fiancée. The monitor’s office, led by New York attorney Neil Barofsky, issues periodic reports about the union’s inner workings.
Fain, who has denied the monitor’s findings and called the allegations outlined by the monitor “bogus,” is campaigning for a second four-year term as the leader of the union, and an election is scheduled for later this year. Boyer is one of a handful of candidates opposing Fain.
The monitor issued a report last month finding that Fain had retaliated against Boyer and improperly used his authority, including in ways that would benefit his fiancée, but deferred a decision on disciplinary action pending further review without citing the federal probe.
“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. “We do not intend to publicly disclose the existence of that investigation at this time,” he continued.
Bloomberg earlier reported that the DOJ was probing allegations around Fain. It is unclear how the investigation affects Fain’s candidacy.
The UAW declined to comment. A lawyer representing the union said it is not the subject of a grand jury investigation. Boyer and his attorney didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a statement responding to the DOJ investigation, Fain said that Boyer had “fed the monitor false allegations,” and that the monitor himself had a “political grudge against me because the UAW took an anti-war stance about what was happening in Gaza.” The union president last month said that Barofsky’s reports were politically motivated, citing what he said was a heated and highly personal disagreement with the monitor in 2024 regarding a call by the union’s executive board for a ceasefire in Gaza.
“What the Monitor is doing is wrong, it’s unfair to the UAW and to you as members, and my lawyers are looking at any and all legal options I can pursue to make it stop,” Fain said in a statement, adding that he retained a law firm to fight the allegations.
The Department of Justice didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The UAW has been under federal oversight since a 2020 settlement to resolve a corruption scandal. The offense involved more than a dozen union officials, some of whom pleaded guilty to embezzling millions of dollars for their personal benefit, using the funds to purchase expensive liquor and cigars and to pay for golfing outings and related equipment, and expensive hotel stays. Two former union presidents were sentenced to prison time.
(Reporting by Nora Eckert and Kalea Hall in Detroit, Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Mike Colias and Aurora Ellis)
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