CMake fails to create directory with a specific name `models` - c++

Question

I am trying to create custom directories and copy files into a test folder during the build process of CMake. (This is needed so I can conveniently run a test script that tests another executable which requires certain directories to be available. The target does not actually build any real outputs.)
The goal is to create empty directories called models and logs in the build directory of my target, custom-test.
The CMake command I am using in CMakeLists.txt:
add_custom_target(custom-test ALL
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E make_directory models logs
)
# Copy files into build dir and the dirs created above
configure_file("config.json" . COPYONLY)
configure_file("temp-model.txt" ./models COPYONLY)
When I build, the logs directory is always created successfully, but weirdly the models directory always produces a build error:
Error creating directory "models".
make[2]: *** [tests/custom-test/CMakeFiles/custom-test.dir/build.make:71: tests/custom-test/CMakeFiles/custom-test] Error 1
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:451: tests/custom-test/CMakeFiles/custom-test.dir/all] Error 2
make[1]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
If I run ls -l tests/custom-test from the BUILD directory, I can see the following entries, which shows that logs was created but models is some kind of dead filepath:
drwxrwxr-x 2 reid reid 4096 Nov 1 10:58 logs
-rw-rw-r-- 1 reid reid 0 Nov 1 10:58 models
My question is why is it only failing to create the models directory? I tried renaming the directory name to modelsdir and other names instead and those all seem to work. But my other applications that I am testing expect there to be a directory called models.
Possibly important side-note: Previously, in my source code I had a subdirectory called models that created a cmake library target models. I have since completely refactored this to another name since I thought cmake might be getting confused, even though that library was unrelated to this test target. I have deleted and regenerated my build directory several times since the refactor which has not helped.
Any help is greatly appreciated :)
EDIT I actually think it may have more to do with the configure_file commands that copy into the newly created directory.