HARRISBURG -- Employees of the House Democratic Legislative Research Office, the target of a search warrant last August, have told state investigators that political work there was so rampant that many employees did far more campaign-related chores than legitimate state work.

"Our office was largely a parking place for people until they were needed for a campaign. It was a way for people who were political operatives to have jobs in nonelection years," said Jason Lawrence, who worked there as a research analyst from 2005 to 2006 and is now in law school in Chicago.

His comments about the research office were echoed by three other caucus employees, two of whom spoke with investigators as part of a widening probe into political corruption. A grand jury probe began with questions after employees of both the Democratic and Republican caucuses were given hefty year-end salary bonuses.

Attorney General Tom Corbett ordered an investigation to determine whether those bonuses were a reward for political work.

Many of the employees in that office "were good foot soldiers that caucus leaders wanted to keep around so they could go beat down doors during campaigns. You beat down doors where the elections were for a couple months every two years and, in exchange for that, you get a low-stress job where you don't have to do a whole lot," Mr. Lawrence said.

Another source, who still works for the caucus, said the same.

"That office was created by [former Democratic Whip Mike Veon] to do campaign work under the guise of constituent services and research," said the woman, who asked not to be identified out of fear she would lose her job for speaking out. "They had some people getting [legitimate legislative] work done, but it was basically a campaign office."

Mr. Veon did not return a call for comment Friday.

Two other sources who worked inside the office said it became easy to trace which employees were assigned primarily to political research and which ones carried out actual legislative research. A computerized file-tracking system essentially kept a record of the legitimate work done inside the office, showing the work of employees who performed research into issues at the request of House members.

"Then you have the people that don't have a documented workload," said the source. "It was so blatant, it was offensive."

In addition to testimony, the Attorney General has obtained multiple in-house e-mails that indicate political research was being conducted by employees in the Legislative Research office.

Jennifer Brubaker, director of the office, declined to comment through her attorney, Phillip DiLucente. Her husband, Scott Brubaker, the director of staffing and administration for the caucus, was among seven employees forced out in November by Majority Leader H. William DeWeese, after e-mails surfaced linking year-end bonuses in 2005 and 2006 to political work.

In nonelection cycles there was so little work to do that employees were sometimes given more than a week for tasks as simple as writing a letter, said sources who worked in the research office. The rest of the time, they surfed the Internet, watched videos on YouTube and listened to radio broadcasts of baseball games.

"There were times I had an hour or two of work to do in an eight-hour work day. On some occasions, even less," Mr. Lawrence said. "There were certainly more of us there than were needed on any given day."

Still, staffers were required to be in the office until session days ended, even during budget talks that lasted until 2 a.m., he said.

"There was no reason for us to be there whatsoever. The point was for us to harvest as much comp time as we could so we could go out later and to campaign work. They required us to be there to get comp time for doing nothing so we could continue getting paid while working for the campaign," Mr. Lawrence said and another source confirmed.

Mr. Lawrence fell out of favor with office supervisors when he used his compensatory time for vacations instead of campaign work and, later, when he refused to volunteer for Whip Mike Veon's 2006 primary campaign.

According to Mr. Lawrence, office director Jennifer Brubaker said to him, "'You didn't lift a finger for Veon, and I don't need to keep you around if you aren't going to support our guys getting elected.' I said I didn't realize my job was tied to an obligation to support candidates that I felt were hurting the caucus instead of helping it." He said he became disenchanted with Mr. Veon for his unwavering support of the controversial 2005 legislative pay raise that ultimately was repealed.

Another legislative aide, who still works for the caucus, corroborated that in a separate interview.

"It was told to employees that you need to do campaign work to keep your job. If you didn't want to travel, you could go down and make telephone calls at the phone bank or you could do opposition research on the Republican candidates," she said.

In 2006, there was particular pressure to work on Mr. Veon's campaign, although employees also helped with other races, the sources said. Now, prosecutors are investigating whether $1.9 million in taxpayer-funded bonuses that year were given rewards to that campaign work, which would be illegal.

In 2005, a nonelection year, bonuses were generally smaller, but there were exceptions, including for a contingent reportedly dispatched to the Lehigh Valley to work on a special election to fill a vacated House seat.

Mr. Lawrence was supposed to be among them, but he was recovering from a knee injury and could not campaign door-to-door with others from his work group. He received a $65 holiday bonus that year, while two co-workers with identical job titles and about the same amount of time with the caucus received $1,000 and $1,565.

"They were saying how the bonuses were a lot more than they expected, and I didn't know what they were talking about," Mr. Lawrence said. "They said it was for going out on the campaign, but they weren't supposed to say anything about it."

The Democratic Research Office where they worked was the subject of a raid on Aug. 23 of last year, when agents from the Attorney General's office executed a search warrant and seized 20 boxes of documents. A judge's ruling on the validity of the warrant later noted that some of the boxes carried blatantly political materials.

It was not clear, though, whether the documents originated in Legislative Research. A person interviewed by the Attorney General's office told them of being advised from a ranking house aide that the boxes were being delivered to the site and to find a place for them.