Nearly two years ago CNN's Brianna Keilar landed a coveted sit-down interview with then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Turns out that long-time Clinton aide and campaign co-chair Huma Abedin thought she was approving an interview with Yahoo! Finance's Bianna Golodryga.
Keilar, along with Golodryga, joined CNN's "Newsroom" on Tuesday to explain the mix-up, after a new book, "Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign," by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, revealed a slightly different version of the events.
In the book, the authors wrote that Clinton had initially said "Bianna," for the July, 2015 interview, but as Abedin relayed her response to the press team, they believed she was requesting "Brianna Keilar."
"There was a press strategy laid out by the press team," explained Keilar during her joint appearance with Golodryga Tuesday, a plan to conduct interviews with a collection of beat reporters on the trail. The series of sit downs would begin with Keilar. At that point Keilar had been covering Clinton for 16 months.
"This was transmitted for approval to Huma Abedin," said Keilar, referring to Clinton's longtime aide and campaign co-chair. "Huma Abedin approved it thinking I was Bianna."
On set with Keilar and host Brooke Baldwin, Golodryga admitted to being in the dark throughout the entire mix-up.
"I had no idea this was going on. I found out when I was reading the book because I'm interviewing one of the authors," she explained. "It happens all the time that my name gets butchered. I never thought it would impede me from participating in what would be one of the biggest stories of my life."
Baldwin and Keilar together recalled the evening that Keilar learned she would be given the interview.
"I was in your apartment when you got the call that you got the interview," Baldwin said.
"It would have been a fantastic interview if Bianna had done it," Keilar quickly noted.
As minor a mistake as it may have been, there's an argument to be made that it was emblematic of the Democratic candidate's campaign.
"It's indicative to the bigger problem that her entire campaign was plagued with," Golodryga said. "If this had been the biggest issue her campaign had, they wouldn't be sweating it today... in a normal campaign, especially of this size and magnitude, I don't think something like this would have happened."
This story has been updated to reflect more details about how CNN's Brianna Keilar came to interview Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign.
