This is the Form 990 tax return that the HSUS Wildlife Land Trust filed with the IRS for fiscal year 1998.  

Total revenue: $3,527,415

Total expenses: $3,326,811

Net assets and end of year: $1,313,819

On this page are links to the federal income tax returns filed by the Global Animal Partnership (GAP) from its inception in 2005 through the end of 2009.

GAP was originally founded by Whole Foods Market as the "Animal Compassion Foundation." After a later name-change, it added Humane Society of the United States CEO Wayne Pacelle to its board and hired HSUS Vice President away to be its Executive Director.

Because GAP was organized as a "private foundation," it files a tax return (Form 990-PF) that discloses where its funding comes from. Through the end of 2009, Whole Foods contributed $1.42 million to GAP, amounting to 77 percent of all reported donations. (Most of the remainder came via a $380,000 contribution in 2009 sent through a "donor-advised fund" that masked the money's source.

In 2010 Whole Foods announced that it would begin implementing a 5-tier animal welfare rating system administered by GAP.

This file contains a 1988 letter to DC attorney Jacob Stein from John "Speedy" Mettler, who was then a Board Member of the Humane Society of the United States’ Board of Directors. Stein is a personal injury attorney. He is now a partner in the same law firm (now renamed) for which he worked in 1988.

This letter concerned a plan by the HSUS Board leadership to hire Stein (then the personal attorney of Board Chairman Bill Wiseman) to “investigate” some shady financial dealings between a “Deferred Compensation Committee” (a subset of the Board that was never legally empowered) and HSUS’s top two executives (Paul Irwin and John Hoyt). These matters had already been investigated by attorney Gail Harmon, and the Board already had her report.

In a previous letter to the HSUS Board’s Vice Chairman, Washington attorney Bardyl Tirana had already warned HSUS about the wisdom of hiring Stein to do a second review of the facts. Tirana thought Stein’s attorney-client relationship with Wiseman constituted a massive conflict of interest, and he feared that Stein’s report was only being sought as a pretext to sweep Harmon’s report under the rug:

William Wiseman, using the power of the chair, after soundly criticizing the “Harmon” report as unbalanced and unfair, announced that he had a plan. He then proceeded to state that “Jake Stein (his personal attorney) has an idea that will get everyone off the hook by starting a procedure that will resolve all of these matters.” You were described as the “new Independent Counsel” and Mr. Wiseman repeated that this would get the Board “off the hook” and said, “we need outside independent counsel of unchallengeable prestige.”

Mettler also neatly lays out the relationship between the HSUS Board’s “Deferred Compensation Committee” (which was never legally constituted, yet met in secret and extended unauthorized perks to Hoyt and Irwin); the “Audit Committee” (which was unanimously approved by the Board and which hired Gail Harmon); and the later “Select Committee” (which was stacked with those implicated in the Harmon report and their sympathizers, and which hired Jacob Stein):

I might point out that Ms. Harmon was also an “independent counsel” but since Mr. Wiseman and others were incriminated in her report, Mr. Wiseman preferred to ignore both the Audit Committee (appointed by the Board) and the Harmon report because there were too many questions raised in the Harmon report that made him, the Deferred Compensation Committee, and some of the executive staff all look bad. So using the chair to his advantage. Chairman Wiseman appointed a “select” committee, stacked heavily with his own sympathetic directors, to try and bury the Harmon report once and for all ...

As you should be well aware, the “Select” Committee was carefully designed by Chairman Wiseman to supersede, and in effect ignore the work done and report issued by the earlier Audit Committee and its attorney, Gail Harmon. (This committee incidentally was unanimously authorized by the Board of Directors in December, 1987). Is Chairman Wiseman, who is under such criticism for having aided and abetted the Hoyt-lrwin activities, really to be part of this “select” committee? Is John Hoyt to be part of it? Or are they simply included to be sure the Harmon report is effectively obliterated?

This file contains a 1988 letter from attorney Bardyl R. Tirana to O.J. (“Joe”) Ramsey, then the Vice Chairman of the Humane Society of the United States’s Board of Directors. Tirana was a former Washington, DC School Board member, and a campaign aide to Jimmy carter who supervised the activities surrounding Carter’s 1976 Inauguration. He later served the Carter Administration as director of the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency. (President Carter later merged that agency into FEMA in 1977.)

Three HSUS Board Members retained Tirana in 1988 that year to represent HSUS’s interests, after details emerged of shady financial dealings between a “Deferred Compensation Committee” (a subset of the Board that was never legally empowered in the first place) and HSUS’s top two executives (Paul Irwin and John Hoyt).

This letter concerns, among other things, Tirana’s legal fees—which HSUS’s Board was obligated to pay. (HSUS’s by-laws permitted Board members to be reimbursed “for necessary expenses incurred in fulfilling their duties.”)

It became “necessary” for an outside lawyer to investigate HSUS’s Board after the three dissenting Board members questioned the decision of HSUS’s Board to buy then-HSUS-president John Hoyt’s house from him in 1987 and lease it back to him rent-free.

They also questioned a land deal that benefited HSUS Treasurer Paul Irwin (who would later succeed Hoyt as HSUS President). Irwin had invested in a vacation home property in Brightwater, Maine. HSUS later reimbursed him for the property with $85,000 in HSUS funds. John Hoyt signed the checks.

These and several other instances of Board mismanagement were detailed in a lengthy independent investigatory report submitted to the Board's Audit Committee in April 1988 by Washington, DC attorney Gail Harmon. Tirana’s letter makes it clear that HSUS’s top leaders sought to bury that report, and to replace it with a less critical investigation conducted by Washington attorney Jacob Stein—who was also the personal attorney of HSUS Board Chairman Bill Wiseman.

This "Memorandum of Understanding" is a contract offered by the Humane Society of the United States to literally thousands of U.S. pet shelters in January 2011, in conjunction with HSUS’s February 2011 “SPAY DAY” promotion.

HSUS offered a similar contract to shelters in 2009. Its annual report claims “nearly 400 organizers in 24 countries” participated, but HSUS’s tax return for the same year reports the disbursement of only about 155 related grants.

In exchange for $2,000 from HSUS, the contract requires pet shelters to turn over detailed records on every animal spayed or neutered with the funds. It also requires each participating shelter to give HSUS at least two photographs and two glowing testimonials for HSUS to use in its public-relations campaigns.

In January 2011 many shelter directors reported that this contract created division among their Board members and staff. The most common disagreement arose over whether it would be appropriate for a shelter that HSUS has never financially supported to accept limited funding for a narrow purpose—with one result being HSUS’s ability to promote itself as something it’s not (a shelter-support charity).

This is the Form 990 (tax return) filed by the Humane Society of the United States for the tax year 1994. At 29 pages, this tax return covers most financial aspects of HSUS, and provides accounting details unavailable anywhere else.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Total revenue: $23.4 million
• Total expenses: $23.3 million
• Net assets as of December 31, 1993: $39.8 million
• Fundraising expenses: $2.0 million
• Salaries and benefits: $5.1 million
• Pension contributions: $559,329
• Total grants to other groups: $298,673
• Funds passed through to the HSUS-affiliated Humane Society International: $410,760

This is the Form 990 (tax return) filed by the Humane Society of the United States for the tax year 1993. At 25 pages, this tax return covers most financial aspects of HSUS, and provides accounting details unavailable anywhere else.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Total revenue: $23.9 million
• Total expenses: $20.4 million
• Net assets as of December 31, 1993: $39.7 million
• Fundraising expenses: $1.4 million
• Salaries and benefits: $4.7 million
• Pension contributions: $399,281
• Total grants to other groups: $205,804
• Funds passed through to the HSUS-affiliated Humane Society International: $212,091

This document is a federal fraud lawsuit filed on December 2, 2010 by the Humane Society of the United States. HSUS sued the Vermont-based Manchester Asset Management and its principal officer, Bayard R. Kraft III.

According to HSUS’s lawsuit, in late 2008 Manchester sold it a $15 million stake in a Cayman Islands-based vehicle called the “Equinox Alternative Offshore Fund L.P.” HSUS claims it made its investment in two stages, giving Manchester $10 million in October 2008, and then adding an additional $5 million a month later at Manchester’s suggestion.

During the month of October 2008 alone, the Equinox fund lost 4.8% of its value, costing HSUS $480,000 of the first $10 million it invested.

HSUS’s lawsuit contends that while it intended to make its final $5 million investment effective on November 1, Manchester instead “backdated” that investment to October 1—costing HSUS an additional $240,000 in “retroactive” losses.

The HSUS would not have incurred the $24 0,000 loss allocated to it on or about November 1, 2 008 had Manchester not backdated The HSUS's additional $5.0 million capital contribution to October 1, 2008. If Manchester had treated The HSUS's additional contribution as "at risk" and thus subject to profit or loss on November 1, 2008, The HSUS's additional contribution would not have been subject to any losses resulting from Equinox's investments during October 2008.

The lawsuit doesn’t address any reasons why HSUS would knowingly invest the second $5 million—regardless of which month it was to be made official—in a fund where it had already lost $480,000 of its contributors’ money.

Nor does it indicate why HSUS had $15 million in cash available for investment in the Caymans, when its own Bylaws require that:

All available funds of the Society shall be used for the immediate relief of suffering and the vigorous prosecution of humane education except as otherwise provided by law or the specific terms of a gift or mandate of a donor.

The lawsuit does, however, suggest that HSUS may have other capital investments with Manchester in addition to the Equinox fund:

Manchester receives a quarterly fee based on the value of all assets invested by The HSUS through Manchester, including all assets invested in Equinox.

This PDF contains HSUS's reply in the case of Daniel Reed Christensen et al. v. Rosie Quinn et al., a federal lawsuit filed in September 2010. The reply, filed October 15, contains HSUS's defense against the claims made in Christensen's complaint.

Christensen sued HSUS following a September 2009 raid on his property. A judge ruled in early 2010 that the search warrant used in the raid, which was executed largely by HSUS and two animal control officers, was wrongfully obtained. The judge also declared that  the animal control officer requesting the warrant "intentionally misled the issuing court by omitting material information in her affidavits and supplemental testimony."

HSUS is represented by the Sioux Falls, SD law firm of Davenport, Evans, Hurwitz & Smith, L.L.P.

This document is from the federal court records of Feld entertainment v. ASPCA et al. Filed on November 19, 2010, it contains the plaintiff's proposal for a 27-month schedule encompassing discovery, depositions, and other matters related to Feld's RICO lawsuit against several animal-rights activists and groups, and their lawyers.

The defendants include the Humane Society of the United States, the HSUS-controlled Fund For Animals, and two attorneys employed by HSUS.

Feld, the parent company of the Ringling Brothers "Greatest Show On Earth" circus, has proposed a schedule through March 1, 2013. HSUS and its co-defendants, on the other hand, asked a federal judge to put everything on hold until its motion to dismiss the whole case has been heard.

This file contains a copy of David Wills's 1973 Virginia criminal indictment for breaking and entering.

Wills would later become the HSUS Vice President in charge of international operations and cruelty investigations.

In an appearance in the Circuit Court of the County of Albemarle in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Wills pled guilty to the charge of breaking and entering. The court sentenced him to 12 months in jail, of which all but 90 days were suspended. Wills also agreed to return the property he stole from a private home, and to pay court costs.

In late 1990, attorneys retained by a group of Humane Society of the United States board members drafted this 23-page class-action lawsuit against HSUS and its leaders, on behalf of the group's members, the members of its Board of Directors, and the U.S. taxpayers.

The complaint was designed to recover $750,000 in damages for the HSUS chief executives' "misconduct, deception, fraud, negligence, and dereliction of duty."

The defendants included:

• HSUS president John Hoyt
• HSUS treasurer Paul Irwin
• HSUS board chairman K. William Wiseman
• HSUS board member Jack Lydman
• HSUS board member Coleman Burke
• HSUS board member O.J. Ramsey

This lawsuit was never actually filed. It was shared with HumaneWatch by a former HSUS board member.

In late 1990, attorneys retained by a group of Humane Society of the United States board members drafted this 12-page civil complaint against HSUS itself.

The complaint was presented to the California Attorney General as one possible legal avenue through which HSUS could recoup financial losses incurred by its chief executives' "breach of fiduciary duty, conflict of interest, self dealing, private inurement, unjust enrichment, misappropriation of charitable assets, and fraud."

It asked for $750,000 to be reimbursed to HSUS by several individual defendants:

• HSUS president John Hoyt
• HSUS treasurer Paul Irwin
• HSUS board chairman K. William Wiseman
• HSUS board member Jack Lydman
• HSUS board member Coleman Burke

The complaint was not acted on. It was shared with HumaneWatch by a former HSUS board member.

This is a copy of a federal lawsuit filed on September 2, 2010 by South Dakota dog breeder Dan Christensen. He sued numerous defendants, including the Humane Society of the United States, its CEO Wayne Pacelle, and former employee Scotlund Haisley, over events related to a 2009 raid on his property which was carried out by HSUS and a local animal rescue organization.

All of Christensen's dogs were confiscated during the raid. A judge later ruled that the search warrant was obtained under false pretenses, and the raid itself was therefore illegal.

The lawsuit demands $5 million in compensation for the following allegations:

• Deprivation of Constitutional Rights Guaranteed by the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution (42 USC § 1983)
• Malicious Prosecution
• Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress
• Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress
• Negligence per se — Criminal Trespass in violation of South Dakota Code 22-35-6
• Negligence per se — Intentional Damage to Private Property in violation of South Dakota Code 22-34-1

In 1988 a group of HSUS Board members asked the Washington, DC law firm of Harmon & Weiss to prepare a report detailing the organizational consequences of several financial irregularities.

During the previous years, a small "Deferred Compensation Committee"—originally set up to handle retirement benefits for HSUS senior staff—had expanded its role to include the assignment of fringe benefits to HSUS's top executives. These perks included rent-free housing, and the use of an HSUS-affiliate shell corporation to funnel extra income to HSUS president and treasurer.

This file contains the lengthy report that Gail Harmon, Esq. prepared for the group of "dissident" HSUS Board members who were concerned about the tax implications, and HSUS's legal liabilities, arising from the Deferred Compensation Committee's behavior.