This reminds me of a story from when I was in business school. We were assigned groups for project work and it was very difficult if not impossible to transfer out of a group. This was by design b/c the point was to teach the students to deal with interpersonal issues and group dynamics.
My friend was in a group with someone we will call Bob. Bob always showed up late, argued about every assignment, would debate for hours about why he couldn't do a task etc.
Eventually, my friend just declared "task bankruptcy" with Bob and gave him no work to do. Why? He realized it was easier to give Bob nothing to do and just redistribute the tasks to the rest of the group versus trying to get Bob to do anything.
I should add, it seems that Bob had some kind of special status with the school as he always showed up late to exams, was able to turn in work late etc.
In closing, a lot of this is reminding me of the "CIA guide to corporate sabotage": https://www.corporate-rebels.com/blog/cia-field-manual