“I actually have had several [members] of the media apologize to me today and yesterday,” Tom Zawistowski, former leader of the Ohio Liberty Coalition and current president of We the People Convention, Inc. and head of the Portage County Tea Party, said at a FreedomWorks roundtable event Thursday.

“They said, ‘Tom I want to apologize to you because when this story came out last year it was so over the top I didn’t believe it, and I didn’t believe it and I questioned it and I didn’t really look into it and then when the IRS commissioner came out and testified to Congress and said, ‘There is no targeting of the tea party, I shut it down,’” he said.

Zawistowski explained that while it sounded outrageous last year, what has come out in recent days is even more concerning than what he and others had initially charged.

“[The media] are now telling me that they thought it was outrageous last year, and now that they have actually seen the documents, it is even more frightening than we said,” he added.