A former official from Joe Biden’s White House and Kamala Harris’s transition team, who was quietly placed within the Department of Labor’s non-political workforce after the election, has been terminated following an investigation by The Daily Wire that exposed the arrangement.

“Elizabeth Peña was terminated, effective today. The Administration is actively working to ensure no other political operatives from the Biden-Harris administration were secretly burrowed into the government,” a source with direct knowledge of the situation told the outlet.

The firing signals that the Trump administration is starting its term with a sharp focus on the federal workforce, demonstrating readiness to identify and address tactics that occasionally hampered the president’s first term.

Strict regulations govern the conversion of political appointees into career employees to prevent undermining a new administration. These conversions require approval from the Office of Personnel Management and must be reported to Congress.

However, between the election and Inauguration Day, the Biden Department of Labor bypassed this process by creating a three-year position and appointing Peña to it, as The Daily Wire revealed on January 15.

The department argued that the rules didn’t apply because the role wasn’t permanent, despite it keeping her in the workforce for most of Trump’s term.

Peña had been a Biden political appointee at the Labor Department before joining Kamala Harris’s transition team, positioning herself for a top political role had Harris won the presidency. However, after Harris’s election loss, Peña was left without a job. Between the election and Trump’s inauguration, the Labor Department attempted to quietly place her in a non-political role.

The move was particularly notable given Peña’s career focus on embedding political operatives into key positions. According to her LinkedIn profile, she previously worked in the Biden White House’s Presidential Personnel Office, the central hub for recruiting and deploying political appointees throughout the federal government, the outlet reported.

Before that, she served on Joe Biden’s presidential transition team, where she helped identify and prepare political operatives for influential roles.

Earlier in her career, Peña worked on Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign, where she “authored over 500 vetting reports analyzing employees.”