The Internal Revenue Service apologized on Friday as it admitted that it was inappropriately targeting Tea Party groups during the 2012 election which checking for tax-exempt status violations. The IRS had previously denied the charges.

At a lawyers' conference in Washington, Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS division that oversees tax exempt organizations, said tax office agents singled out dozens of groups for extra security by checking for key words like “tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for exemption. In some instances, these organizations were asked for doctor lists, which violate IRS policy, and excessive paper work.

Lois Lerner said in a statement that agents "used names like tea party or patriots. And they selected cases simply because the application had those names in the title. That was wrong. The IRS would like to apologize for that." Lerner’s statement contradicted March 2012 testimony that was given by the former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, who said "There's absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back-and-forth process that happens when people apply." Shulman was appointed by President George W. Bush. He maintains that he did not know about the targeting at the time.

Lerner said that the low-level employees in Cincinnati who were scrutinizing the groups weren’t motivated by political bias, but wanted to more efficiently identify groups that didn’t quality for tax exempt status. Lerner said "We had a shortcut in the process that the staff did, it wasn't appropriate, we learned about it, we fixed it."

On Friday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) called for a top-to-bottom review of the Obama administration, "I call on the White House to conduct a transparent, government-wide review aimed at assuring the American people that these thuggish practices are not under way at the IRS or elsewhere in the administration against anyone, regardless of their political views."

At a news briefing, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney admitted that it was inappropriate for the IRS to target tea party groups, but largely avoided questions about a White House-led investigation.
Lerner said that about 75 groups were inappropriately scrutinized but that none of them had their tax-exempt status revoked.