If they literally couldn't hire anyone because of a freeze, I'd expect a person being paid $190k to be networking and identifying groups in other organizations

If they literally couldn't hire anyone because of a freeze, I'd expect a person being paid $190k to be networking and identifying groups in other organizations that might be good to poach from based on the estimated needs of your company. There are things recruiters can do that aren't recruiting. Just like any other job, there's important stuff to do in downtime.