targeting people because of their affiliation. that would be a real no-no. dana baschuck is on capitol hill. some say this is smithsonian. reporter: some republicans need to be careful, okay, because we don t yet know if president obama was at all involved or knowledgeable or anyone in the white house for that matter. so that would make it 96 on nixonian. fiction first and foremost the idea that irs agents were targeting specific groups. secondly, from thor techive of people here in congress, why they didn t tell members of congress. we obtained information that gifls our viewaries time line of what we re talking about here. let start going back to march and april of 2010. we are told by our documents that we have obtained that is when, carole, irs agents started searching for political sounding names like we the people or take back the country and if august of that year, there was
bangladesh, surviveing on dried biscuits and rationed water for 17 days. meet one amazing survivor. and the irs says, i m sorry, four singling out tea party groups. the in fact that the irs was doing this is absolutely disgusting. it s an abuse of power. this morning, a call for heads to rom. and geek alert. this is crowd control. nasa commander chris hadfield bids good-bye to space. are you live in the cnn newsroom. and good morning. thank you so much for being with me. i m carole costello. we begin in cleveland this morning, anger, betray am, maybe even hatred t. brothers of ariel crass tro speak out. we will show cellphone video
party, i should take a spep accept back the tea parties were, they came to life. they were created by the people who are a part of them, in large part, because they are concerned about bureaucrats and the government getting too big for their britches, so to speak. so the irony and outrage about this can t be underscored enough. our next guest will tell us more. joining me is justin bennett thomas, a founder of the cincinnati tea party. thank you so much for being with us. we appreciate it. thank you for having me. a lot of reports have been about the irs singling out conservative groups, tea party groups. you say you were personally targeted be i the irs. tell us what happened. sure. that s exactly right. included in one of tease letters to a group north of cincinnati. it was question number 26 that ask, describe your relationship with just teven bennett
indeed, it started with a low level person, it was certainly known within the organization very quickly and it was not addressed. so i need to know what systematic changes have occurred to make sure they don t reokwur. so if all these allegations are proved true, do you think ledz heads should roshlgs do you think there should be suspensions, what do you think needs to be done if these allegations are true? well, i ll not in imagement. the decisions in in management. the decisions would be heads are internal. checks and balances in place and the information gathered won t be held against the groups, frankly, me, in this situation. i know president obama is probably going to be questioned about the today. what do you want to hear from him? well, i d love for the president to further acknowledge that this was wrong, to support to the probe, to its deepest extent and again i d like acknowledgment from the irs or from the white house, though
groups, they tend to back republicans. this is bipartisan when it comes to the outrage in congress. so people understand, these tea party groups, these conservative groups were applying for a nonprofit status, right? reporter: that s exactly right. they were applying for nonprofit status. what these irs agents, with who started this targeting were trying to do was to determine whether or not they should get the status. what the irs says that this was a mistake, but it was simply a shortcut. it wasn t a way to target them for political reasons. there is a lot of eyebrow raising here in washington and everywhere, that that was really the case. it really was done for political reasons. we should know more when the full audit comes out sometime this week from the irs. of course, as you can imagine, carole, we are hearing from the house, ways and means committee and others that they are going to do an investigation. they are not going to tett let this go. i should at ttell you, the tea