Political groups with the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications were flagged for extra review by the Internal Revenue Service during the 2012 election, the IRS admitted Friday, according to the Associated Press.

Lois Lerner, who heads the unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, apologized at a conference in Washington for the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.  She said the practice, started by low-level employees in Cincinnati, was not motivated by political bias, and told the AP no high-level IRS employees knew about it.

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