Walter M. Shaub Jr., director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, arrives for a scheduled meeting with the leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Monday, Jan. 23, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington. J. Scott Applewhite | AP

President Donald Trump Leah Millis | Reuters

Shaub says now that if the administration "had taken our advice, they wouldn't have half the problems they have now." "It just felt like a brush with something very dark and very sinister," Shaub said. "The tone from the top set everything, but they brought in people that thought like him." The White House had no immediate comment on Shaub's remarks. Shaub said that in addition to dealing with that level of friction with the new administration, his staff was inundated with a huge influx of Freedom of Information Act requests and other work. "The staff looked just really fried," Shaub recalled. "The problem is the direct assault on the ethics program which is the thing that every person in that room had committed their lives to, he said. "We were all deeply committed to this ethics program and we're watching its virtual destruction. We were trying to hold on to what pieces of the program could survive this assault." "It just occurred to me that maybe if the boss said 'we're going to take a 10 break ... and it would be completely voluntary, that would be a relief," Shaub said. "You have to have more peace," he said. "Both from the perspective of productivity and harmony in the office." He said "I'd always been interested in meditation, and I'd listened to various tapes" to do that. And he already had the Headspace app on his phone when he broached the idea of using it with his staff. "I just kind of casually introduced it at a staff meeting, and said, 'Some of us are going to start doing this, and you are free to join or not to join,' " Shaub recalled. Shaub said that out of an office of about 70 staffers, there were six core people who always showed up for the daily Headspace meditation session, which began at 3:10 p.m. On any given day, up to another seven or so people would join them. During the 10 minutes the group was together, they would sit silently in a conference room with dimmed lights, their eyes closed and meditate, aided intermittently by the voice of Headspace co-founder Andy Puddicombe as the app played. An Englishman who spent a decade as a Buddhist monk, Puddicombe's words would guide the ethics staffers through a series of meditative exercises, such as focusing on their breath's inhalation and exhalation, or on imagining the image of liquid sunlight passing through their bodies. Puddicombe also at times would tell listeners not to resist any ideas they had — be they of Trump or of anything else — but to let them come and go in their heads, and to recognize them as being just thoughts. "The people in the room thought he was the best thing," Shaub said of Puddicombe's soothing, sometimes wry voice.

Andy Puddicombe, co-founder of HEADspace. Jarrett Bellini | CNBC