Nazi Germany began removing Jews from public life by asserting, in law and propaganda, that Jewish identity made judges, lawyers, and other public officials unfit to administer justice impartially.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib and her allies employed a modern version of that tactic by arguing Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel could not impartially prosecute pro-Palestinian protesters because she is Jewish. Nessel ultimately abandoned the misdemeanor trespassing prosecution of protesters at the University of Michigan after saying the campaign challenging her objectivity had made it impossible to proceed.
UAW President Shawn Fain is now deploying the same smear against court-appointed federal monitor Neil Barofsky, the former federal prosecutor who became a progressive hero by accusing the Obama administration of rescuing Wall Street while selling out Main Street during the financial crisis.
With help from conflicted labor publications and sympathetic outlets including The New York Times and The American Prospect, Fain may yet succeed in making that narrative stick.
Fain is understandably running scared. A federal grand jury is investigating allegations that he pressured a high-ranking union official to secure benefits for his fiancée and her sister. The Detroit News reported that he has retained Robert Zink and Ben O’Neil of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan—the elite corporate defense firm that has represented Elon Musk, one of the very billionaires Fain routinely vilifies.
To explain away the allegations, Fain has cast himself not as the subject of a corruption investigation but as the victim of a politically motivated vendetta.
“I’ve retained a law firm to fight against the (court-ordered) Monitor’s trumped-up claims against me,” Fain said in a statement. “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’s claim to victimhood rests on his assertion that Barofsky has pursued a personal vendetta because of the UAW’s anti-Israel positions.
Fain has publicly alleged that Barofsky—who is Jewish—weaponized his anti-corruption monitorship to retaliate against the UAW over its early call for a ceasefire in Gaza. As evidence, Fain points to Barofsky’s decision to forward a letter from the Anti-Defamation League expressing concern that rhetoric used by a local UAW affiliate could inflame antisemitism and potentially run afoul of anti-boycott laws.
Fain argues that by forwarding the ADL letter, Barofsky improperly inserted himself into the union’s internal affairs and that the damaging findings Barofsky has since made public are part of a vindictive smear campaign. The New York Times and other publications have placed Fain’s legal troubles in the broader context of President Trump’s scrutiny of prominent left-leaning figures, reinforcing Fain’s claim that Barofsky’s investigation is politically motivated.
It’s a convenient narrative. According to Mike Elk, a veteran labor reporter and an avowed anti-Zionist, it is also hogwash.
In Payday Report, the publication he founded after receiving an NLRB settlement following his dismissal for participating in a Politico union organizing drive, Elk reports that transcripts of UAW Executive Board meetings he obtained show that Barofsky not only didn’t interfere in the union’s political process—he openly rejected legal threats leveled by the ADL over the UAW’s support for Gaza.
The transcripts also show Barofsky rejecting the premise that he was acting on behalf of the ADL or attempting to police the union’s position on Gaza. Speaking about ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, Barofsky said:
“I think [the ADL] is uninformed. I think he is wrong. I don’t agree with it.”
If Fain’s allegations are accurate, releasing the Executive Board transcripts would strengthen his case. According to Elk, the UAW constitution requires Executive Board meeting records to be made available to members, but Fain has repeatedly refused to release the transcripts despite a ruling by the union’s Public Review Board.
“With Fain facing a grand jury for credible scandals around his leadership, he’s leaned harder than ever into a persecution narrative against Barofsky to make himself a martyr, relying heavily on his narrative and the lack of access to transcripts for members and independent news outlets to review,” Elk says.
“A review of the UAW’s Executive Board transcripts presents a very different view of what happened between Fain and Barofsky. Why this Zionist conspiracy theory has been allowed to persist raises troubling questions about the editorial independence of some left-leaning media outlets.”
Elk is an old-school labor reporter who believes journalists have an obligation to disclose conflicts that could reasonably call their independence into question. He also isn’t afraid to name names.
One of them is Ryan Grim, the co-founder of Drop Site News. In July 2024, Elk says Grim published an article portraying Barofsky as motivated by Zionist sympathies. According to Elk, he repeatedly urged Grim to disclose that his editor, Nausicaa Renner, is married to Jonah Furman, the UAW’s former communications director, who was later demoted and suspended after Barofsky found he had illegally retaliated against UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock.
Grim, Elk says, refused the request.
During the UAW’s 2023 “Stand Up” strike, The Detroit News obtained private messages Furman wrote in a group chat on X. Rather than discussing the prospect of higher wages or better working conditions for UAW members, Furman boasted that the union was inflicting “recurring reputational damage and operational chaos” on the Detroit Three.
“If we can keep them wounded for months, they don’t know what to do,” he wrote. “The beauty is we’ve laid it all out in public and they’re still helpless to stop it.”
Furman remains employed in the UAW’s communications department. He also co-chaired the Metro DC chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America Labor Working Group—an organization that, in its own words, “stands in unwavering solidarity” with pro-Palestinian encampments on U.S. campuses and “their righteous message.”
According to Elk, he and Renner also own a $1.3 million home in Evanston, Ill. That’s noteworthy given that Fain famously wore an “Eat the Rich” T-shirt during the Detroit Three strike while Furman privately reveled in wounding the very companies that provide UAW members with some of the highest-paying manufacturing jobs in America.
Elk also faults Jacobin for failing to disclose that its labor columnist, Chris Brooks, had been forced out as the UAW’s chief of staff after Barofsky found he had participated in a campaign to retaliate against Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock. Elk similarly criticizes Labor Notes for not telling readers that columnist Jane Slaughter helps direct a labor fund that financially supports the UAW Member Action network backing Fain’s reelection. Furman also was previously a Labor Notes staff writer.
In each case, Elk argues, readers were denied information they could reasonably use to evaluate the publications’ coverage of Barofsky and Fain.
As Elk notes, Barofsky has had a long and distinguished career.
Bill Moyers, the legendary public broadcasting journalist and champion of corporate accountability, praised Barofsky for his “courage and willingness to stand up to the most powerful people and institutions in Washington D.C. and on Wall Street” and for his relentless criticism of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other Obama administration officials.
From December 2008 through March 2011, Barofsky served as Special Inspector General for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), rooting out waste, fraud and abuse involving companies that received bailout funds. Under his leadership, SIGTARP secured fraud convictions against dozens of defendants, recovered more than $160 million in assets, and prevented hundreds of millions of dollars in improper taxpayer payments.
Barofsky later chronicled his experience in Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, a scathing critique of the government’s rescue of the financial industry.
Before becoming Inspector General, Barofsky spent more than eight years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where he led major mortgage fraud, securities fraud and narcotics prosecutions. His work earned the Justice Department’s prestigious John Marshall Award.
Despite Barofsky’s bipartisan reputation for challenging powerful institutions—including the Obama administration itself—several left-leaning publications framed Fain’s accusations with remarkably little skepticism.
The New York Times headlined Fain’s claim that he was the victim of “bogus allegations” rather than the extraordinary fact that the president of the United Auto Workers had become the subject of a federal grand jury investigation.
Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect went further, accusing Barofsky of “taking sides” in the union’s presidential election while largely accepting Fain’s account of their dispute.
Neither publication had access to the UAW Executive Board transcripts, yet both accepted Fain’s characterization of Barofsky’s motives with remarkably little skepticism.
Fain’s influence extends well beyond the UAW.
The union was the first to endorse Zohran Mamdani’s candidacy for New York City mayor. It has also endorsed Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, an outspoken critic of Israel who has been linked to Hasan Piker, the popular Twitch streamer and political commentator who has expressed support for designated terrorist organizations and trafficked in antisemitic rhetoric.
The UAW has also endorsed Democrat Jocelyn Benson for Michigan governor. At the union’s recent convention, Benson promised that if elected, the UAW would play a central role in her administration.
“The UAW is going to be front and center as we fight, not just through November, but into 2027, into 2028,” Benson said. “Together, we can make Michigan the best place in the nation to live, to work, to raise a family included in our union values.”