Animal Rights Hall of Shame: Nick Cooney

Criminals, Sex Predators and Drug Addicts. Welcome to the World of Animal Rights.

Meet convicted criminal and predator Nicholas Cooney.

Like all animal rights extremists, Nicholas Cooney has no demonstrated knowledge of animals.  Get this... he has a bachelors degree in "non-violence" studies.  Maybe he should go back to school and study underwater basket weaving this time as he doesn't seem to have learned much the first time.  

He first surfaced as one of the members of the Philadelphia chapter of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). Activists like Cooney and his pals are opposed to all medical research.   Instead of just having an opinion on the subject like the rest of us, these domestic terrorists took things to extremes. For example, on September 7, 2005, the New York Stock Exchange temporarily suspending trading Huntingdon’s stock because animal rights activists sent out over 10,000 emails threatening employees of the stock exchange and publishing the direct dial numbers and personal email addresses of dozens of stock exchange employees. Three days earlier, activists poured paint stripper all over the car of an employee of a company linked to Huntingdon.  Numerous other suspicious fires and acts of vandalism occurred at various employees’ homes. Non-violence indeed. 

As part of these long vandalism sprees, Nicholas Cooney was arrested in July 2005 in New Jersey with paint on his hands that matched graffiti sprayed on a fence at the Hoffman-LaRoche Pharmaceuticals plant accusing employees of being “puppy killers.” When the police detained him along with activist Janice Angelillo, they gave fake names. Items found in their car linked them to a case of vandalizing a home and car in Long Branch by spray-painting graffiti and gluing the locks shut. The innocent victims living in the home had no connection to Huntingdon or the medical research field. SHAC is famous for six of its leaders being convicted of domestic terrorism charges. Like a chip off daddy’s shoulder, the Philadelphia chapter was just as violent as the main group. In an effort to cover their backgrounds they renamed themselves “Hugs For Puppies” in 2002. Sounds so cute.   So non-violent...

At the same time, Cooney founded another front group called “The Humane League” in 2005 to mask his activities. In 2006, Cooney was convicted of making terroristic threats, criminal conspiracy and harassment in a Pennsylvania court. According to court documents, Cooney threatened to kill the children of an employee of a drug company. 

During the sentencing hearing the prosecutor noted that Cooney had the audacity to wear a shirt with the message “I believe in the use of violence to achieve animal liberation” at protests and that Cooney also had “disorderly conduct” and “criminal trespass” convictions.

Since that time, Cooney has attempted to go after anyone who tries to reveal his true identity.  His Wikipedia page is sparkling clean.  He even tried to sue the Center for Consumer Freedom, a watchdog group that publishes dirt on animal rights terrorists. They ran an ad in 2008 revealing his background. Cooney sued. He lost. Courts have long ruled that leaders of non-profits are ‘public figures’ which raises that libel bar as high as the law allows.

The ad was captioned, “Why is [HSUS] Helping a Terrorist Group Raise Money?” Plaintiff alleges libel based on the ad’s statements that plaintiff, in its purported prior incarnation as SHAC Philly and Hugs For Puppies, had ties to SHAC USA (an animal rights organization whose leaders undisputedly were convicted of, among other things, conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Protection Act); that plaintiff’s organizers have been involved in violence; and that the media had reported that plaintiff’s leader, Nicholas Cooney, threatened to kill the child of a pharmaceutical company that works with Huntingdon Life Sciences, an animal research lab targeted by SHAC USA for its animal testing practices. 

Cooney next surfaced working for five years at Mercy for Animals before he was forced to resign as executive vice president after multiple employees came forward to accuse him of workplace bullying and harassment.

“Nick Cooney’s history of abuse is an open secret, and sadly, a history with which I have firsthand experience.

Throughout the majority of last year, I experienced Nick’s gender-based bullying on a near-daily basis….His actions have dehumanized me, degraded my confidence, devastated my mental health, and made me question my sanity, worth, and competence for the better part of a year.” Christina Wilson. 

There there’s this testimony from ex-staffer Jaya Bhumitra, “He made me question my worth, ability, and sanity–an experience I have since learned is a pattern among numerous other women who have worked closely with Nick.  

Krista Hiddema, vice president at Mercy for Animals had this to say, “Sadly Christina and Jaya are in good company – there are many other women who have similar experiences with Nick.” 

In the years since his criminal convictions in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Cooney has done a good job of scrubbing the Internet of his past.  The Humane League still exists and continues to get millions of dollars given to it by the Open Philanthropy Project. In August of 2018, The Humane League was given another ten-million-dollar grant.

These days Cooney promotes himself as a venture capitalist investing in plant based alternatives to real food when he's not lecturing at Harvard, Yale and other top educational conferences.   Just the man America needs educating their impressionable college kids.