A Salt Lake County Republican said he was thrown out of a county GOP central committee meeting Saturday morning and forced to erase a video file on his digital recorder after he taped the meeting.

Committee members said Randy Nielsen did not have permission to record the meeting and disagreed with his account of the incident.

Nielsen said he decided to tape the open meeting, held in the Salt Lake County Complex, in case law enforcement was called to remove anyone from the meeting, as has happened recently, he said. After members of the committee realized he was recording the meeting, he said, they told him to stop. When he argued, a sheriff's deputy asked him to leave.

Nielsen said he was taken to the sheriff's office and interrogated by the deputy and Jess Hartley, executive director of the state Republican Party. Nielsen said he was told to delete the recording and feared he would be arrested if he did not comply.

"I felt like I was being held in that room," he said. "They told me I couldn't have the tape."

Enid Greene, chairwoman of the county central committee, said Nielsen publicly volunteered to delete the recording before leaving the committee room and was invited to return after he deleted the tape. She said he was violating party rules that prohibit recording of party meetings by anyone other than a designated official.

Greene said the purpose of the rule is to prevent someone from altering or manipulating the record of the meeting. She said the group Nielsen is associated with has a long history of exaggerating events that occur during meetings.

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