If what you are saying was remotely true, there would be numerous civil and criminal fraud and related prosecutions of these groups. Could you kindly cite or link to articles or cases about how the groups who applied for the 501(c)(4) status were charged with wrongdoing, civilly or criminally? I do not believe that the IRS has even been able to cite any improprieties by these groups in the lawsuits against the IRS, and virtually all were approved. Additionally, the fact that the IRS clearly requested materials like certain membership lists that they could not legally demand, speaks for itself (some of which were leaked to private groups opposing same sex marriage, another severe breach of federal privacy laws which resulted in punishments).
For heaven's sake, the White House has already condemned the targeting. The only issue is the extent and identities of the individuals who targeted, i.e., did the orders come from the White House. High level and career civil servants do not claim their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and government agencies do not mysteriously lose innumerable email, texts and other material from multiple high and mid-level employees, if everything they were doing complied with the law. If the targeted groups were progressive, the outrage would, quite rightly, match or exceed conservative complaints.
You may believe the Tea Party groups were getting the scrutiny they "deserved," but the law clearly does not give civil servants the discretion to make such determinations based on the content of the beliefs of such groups.
You might also note that the 501(c)(4) groups, liberal and conservative, were, and are, actually permitted under the law to engage in "limited" partisan activities. The fact that a lot of new 501(c)(4)'s supported conservative causes or even had "Tea" in their name did not remove their First Amendment protections or permit additional scrutiny by civil servants.
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