The Sun intentionally allowed its contract with Katie Hopkins to lapse, a News UK source told BuzzFeed News, after Mail Online announced on Thursday it had signed the controversial columnist and reality TV staple.
Hopkins has gained online notoriety for a series of outspoken views expressed in The Sun and in regular TV interviews, including on Ebola victims, the Rotherham grooming scandal, and accusing dementia patients of hospital "bed blocking".
Most recently, a column from April calling for gunboats to be used to prevent refugees reaching Europe attracted widespread outrage after it was resurfaced in the wake of pictures of the body of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach.
Mail Online's publisher and editor-in-chief, Martin Clarke, hailed his new signing in a post celebrating the hire.
"Katie's column is a must read for people across Britain and around the globe," he said in his statement. "Even if you don't agree with what she says, she certainly knows how to engage and entertain an audience."
However, a source within The Sun suggested Mail Online didn't necessarily have to fight too hard to secure their new hire. Asked whether The Sun had tried to keep Hopkins, he told BuzzFeed News that "her contract was allowed to lapse".
Hopkins is the second high-profile signing to Mail Online – as opposed to the newspaper which accompanies it – in the last year. Former newspaper editor and TV presenter Piers Morgan was hired as editor-at-large for the US outpost of the site last September.
As Richard Moynihan noted on Twitter however, the outlet's two high-profile signings may not become fast friends:
