CNN’s hiring of Sarah Isgur Flores, a longtime G.O.P. operative who has worked for Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz, and most recently served as a spokeswoman for Jeff Sessions in the Justice Department (a position that reportedly involved a loyalty pledge to Donald Trump), caused an immediate and fairly predictable media firestorm. Unlike Corey Lewandowski, who was hired to great consternation during the 2016 election cycle (and then terminated), Flores won’t simply be an ideological talking head—she’ll be playing a larger role in the editorial process. Despite a lack of journalism experience, she will be helping to coordinate CNN’s political coverage across platforms, as well as occasionally appearing on-air as a political analyst, which is the more customary role for former politicians and government officials. Within the media world, she is seen as a controversial and unorthodox appointment. Moreover, Isgur apparently has a history of lambasting the mainstream media on Twitter, including CNN, which she once termed the “Clinton News Network.”

All of this has led to a fair amount of bafflement as to why CNN would hire her in a senior editorial role reporting to political director David Chalian. “Why CNN made this move to begin with is the deeper and more troubling question,” Margaret Sullivan wrote Wednesday in The Washington Post.

As far as how the talks came about in the first place, it appears that Isgur, as she was preparing to exit the D.O.J., wasn’t only shopping around for a media gig at CNN. Cable-news sources told me that she also passed through 30 Rock to discuss a potential role at MSNBC, where she met with top newsroom management in recent months. “She had a detailed idea of what she wanted to do,” someone with knowledge of the discussions told me. “She wanted to do something on-air combined with some sort of quasi-management, behind-the-scenes planning kind of work. I think she looked at Dave Chalian and said, I wanna do that.” A second source with direct knowledge of the talks said that such a role “was never under consideration.” This person added, “She was pitching her intimate knowledge of the Mueller probe as a selling point.” (CNN has said that Isgur will have no role in any coverage related to Mueller or the Department of Justice.) MSNBC declined to comment, and CNN didn’t immediately have a comment. Isgur didn’t immediately return an e-mail, but after this article was initially published, a source close to her provided a different characterization, saying that anything related to Mueller was always off the table in Isgur's conversations with both MSNBC and CNN.

My CNN sources corroborated the general sentiment that’s been conveyed in other news reports about the episode: that journalists at the network are concerned and confused about the hire. “It’s perplexing to a lot of people,” one of them told me. But in a memo to employees on Wednesday, three top CNN managers—Chalian, Washington bureau chief Sam Feist, and senior vice president of newsgathering Virginia Mosley—stood by the decision, saying they were “thrilled” that Isgur was joining the network next month. “With more than two dozen candidates to cover, constant coordination is needed more than ever,” they wrote.

Likewise, unnamed CNN executives defended the move to Brian Stelter, the network’s chief media correspondent. “They described her [as] an exceptional person whose political experience will improve CNN’s coverage,” Stelter wrote. “The fact is, political insiders have been joining newsrooms for decades. The executives pointed to past examples like George Stephanopoulos, who went from [the] Clinton White House to the ABC News anchor chair.” A CNN source added to me, “She is super-smart, has experience in the media, is a spokesperson who understands the media—seems like these are all good characteristics.”

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