Former NAACP chairman Julian Bond on Tuesday said the IRS was justified in flagging tea party groups for extra review.
“I think it’s entirely legitimate to look at the tea party,” he told MSNBC host Thomas Roberts. “Here are a group of people who are admittedly racist, who are overtly political, who’ve tried as best they can to harm President Obama in every way they can.”
The NAACP was audited by the IRS in 2004 after Bond delivered an anti-war speech. The IRS said the NAACP was being audited because Bond criticized the President of the United States. But Bond denied any parallels between that incident and the more recent incident. He suggested that extra scrutiny of the tea party groups was justified.
“They are the Taliban wing of American politics,” he said. “We all ought to be a little worried about them.”
Roberts question if Bond was being overly harsh.
“Not at all, not at all,” Bond replied. “The truth may hurt, but it’s the truth.”
IRS officials have admitted to using terms like “tea party” and “patriots” to flag groups applying to be social welfare nonprofits. The agency also asked unnecessary, burdensome questions to some of these groups.
Watch video, courtesy of MSNBC, below:
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