Inside the DOJ "rubber room," where veteran lawyers stream shows to pass time

When the Trump administration swept into the Department of Justice on Jan. 20, it moved swiftly to purge, demote, transfer and otherwise sideline career lawyers not perceived to be team players or sufficiently committed to the MAGA legal agenda.

Amid the upheaval and exodus of longtime federal prosecutors, one quiet 10th floor office in a remote outpost of the Justice Department has come to symbolize the withering impact of changes at the agency. Those who work there call it "the rubber room."

Inside, nearly a dozen of the government's most seasoned civil rights, environmental and national security lawyers have been reconstituted as members of a newly created group called the Sanctuary Cities task force.

At first glance, the job seemed promising — a legal strike team that would sue municipalities the administration claimed were facilitating the violation of immigration laws, a task force undertaking a top priority for the new Justice Department leadership.

But the more these attorneys looked into it, the more they concluded the task force was a sham, a Potemkin operation that seemed more aimed at stashing away career lawyers than putting them to work on a legitimate legal project, according to interviews with six people knowledgeable about the task force, all of whom painted a similar picture.

Lawyers there have been assigned menial research tasks and left with hours of idle time — an effort they view as intended to coerce them into resigning, those with knowledge of the task force said.

"This is a hard thing to talk about," said Tom Mariani, an environmental litigator who resigned rather than accept reassignment to the rubber room. "I can't tell you how much personal distress I feel over how these folks were treated."

The term rubber room is an allusion to now-infamous "reassignment centers" where New York City officials transferred public school teachers and administrators who some considered burned out or incompetent, but who could not be fired because of union rules. But in this case, those being transferred have been elite veteran attorneys from the Civil Rights Division, the National Security Division and the Environment and Natural Resources Division whose performance had not previously been questioned.

For months they did little or no work, were cut off from other Justice Department litigators who were actually working on sanctuary city cases and had no supervisors they could turn to for support, those familiar with the assignment told CBS News. At least four of those assigned to the task force have filed formal complaints with the Justice Department's inspector general alleging waste, fraud and abuse, CBS News has learned.

That office declined comment on whether there is an active investigation into the treatment of the task force lawyers.

None would comment for this story, fearing retaliation from the administration. But public interest lawyers and government watchdogs say their experience stands apart as an example of how callously civil servants who have dedicated their professional lives to public service have been treated.

"For the first time in modern U.S. history, we are witnessing purely vindictive and retaliatory actions being taken against non-partisan civil servants who simply performed their jobs consistent with law and policy during prior time," said Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who represents government whistleblowers.

The emails began arriving in the third week of January from then-Acting Attorney General James McHenry, landing in the inboxes of some of the Justice Department's most senior career attorneys, notifying them that they were being transferred to the newly-created Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group and had 15 days to decide whether to take the new assignment or resign.

Among those told they were being transferred to the task force were the two most senior career lawyers in the National Security Division, George Toscas and Eun Young Choi. Toscas, who was one of the most knowledgeable counterterrorism lawyers in the federal government, took personal leave instead of showing up at the task force offices. Choi, a highly experienced cyber and crypto prosecutor, also took personal leave. Both have since left the department.

Mariani, who was the chief of the enforcement section of the Environment and Natural Resources section, was a 40-year veteran of the Justice Department who had reached retirement age. He said he opted to exit rather than take the new assignment.

Those who did accept the assignment arrived in the isolated offices during what some called a Department of Justice in turmoil, former senior prosecutors told CBS News.

In this environment, several people familiar with the matter told CBS News that lawyers assigned to the new sanctuary cities section felt they had few options. They showed up for their first day — Feb. 12 — at a satellite building of the Justice Department known informally as 2Con for its address at 2 Constitution Avenue. Their handler was Kendra Wharton, an associate deputy attorney general who had worked on multiple legal cases involving President Trump before joining the department.

Wharton rarely, if ever, showed up at the 10th floor office at 2Con. Some lawyers said they never saw her at the rubber room in the nearly three months they were on the task force.

In the first few weeks, she communicated with the group on video calls to give them their assignments. On Feb. 13, at 9:30 a.m., Wharton called in from Justice Department headquarters while the attorneys gathered around a monitor. According to a source familiar with the call, she asked them to research the sanctuary city policies in several heavily Democratic states. The lawyers asked if they could contact the Civil Division lawyers handling the litigation in those states, but Wharton told them she was to be the single point of contact.

"A 10th grader could have done it," one source familiar with the work remarked bitterly.

Two weeks later, Wharton asked the lawyers to compile information on three additional states. On March 5, Wharton asked for "emergency" follow up on a single city, according to one source. A few days later she added one more blue state to the places she wanted studied.

After that, Wharton received a different mandate, and she is no longer supervising the lawyers, a Justice Department official said. Work in the rubber room slowed to a halt.

"Having worked around the clock for years, if not decades, the imposed idleness was something I could not get used to," said one lawyer who was assigned to the task force.

The lawyers continued coming into 2Con each morning but had to find activities to occupy their time. Some completed jigsaw puzzles and streamed television shows like "The Last of Us" and "Succession." One lawyer, Deborah Harris, whose previous job had been head of the Environment and Natural Resources Division's crimes section, could be seen practicing Italian on Duolingo.

Reached for comment, Harris confirmed some details about some of the ways she passed her time in the rubber room but declined to say anything more.

A Justice Department spokesperson said, "The Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group is focused on important work to advance top priorities of this administration."

The rubber room is just the latest in a series of personnel moves that critics of the administration have tracked. Some have been demoted within their own units. Bruce Swartz, the highly respected head of the Office of International Affairs, was notified by email that he was being transferred to the office's training program, a job that fell several rungs below his position. He opted to resign.

Nearly a dozen prosecutors in the Public Integrity Section and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York quit rather than sign onto legal actions they objected to — such as the decision in February to drop the prosecution of New York Mayor Eric Adams.

And at the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, the interim top prosecutor fired or demoted dozens of assistant U.S. attorneys who had won convictions against hundreds of rioters who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Those who did not resign were given jobs typically assigned to junior prosecutors, sometimes referred to as "baby AUSAs," like handling misdemeanors in D.C. Superior Court or working in the office's intake section screening cases for prosecution or alternative action.

Harold Koh, Sterling professor of international law and a former dean of Yale Law School, served in the Justice and State Departments under four presidents from both parties. For him, the rooting out of so many lawyers represents more than the personal devastation of these government professionals — it would be a loss for the American people for years to come.

"Apart from the shabby, petty treatment of career government officials and the degradation of government institutions, the greatest injury to the American people is the harm caused by the destruction of preparedness for dealing with the next crisis," Koh said of this administration.

"The best and the brightest have always wanted to go to Justice," he added, "but who would want to go to a place like that now?"