The scandal around Hillary Clinton`s use of a personal email account to conduct State Department business has reached a new stage.

 In 2013, a number of emails written to Hillary Clinton by D.C. operative Sidney Blumenthal were leaked online, and in recent daysGawker and ProPublica have been reexamining those emails in light of the clintonemail.com controversy

Legal experts say that Blumenthal may have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act because he emailed Clinton on behalf of a foreign entity—specifically, on behalf of a Putin-friendly politican named Bidzina Ivanishvili who later became the prime minister of Georgia—even though Blumenthal hadn"t notified the U.S. government that he was working on Ivanishvili"s behalf.

Blumental has attached a letter of Ivanishvili to one his e-mail messages to Clinton.

Ivanishvili wrote to Hillary Clinton that Saakashvili`s Cold War rhetoric was not in the interests of the West. According to him, this made it impossible to cooperate with the West in terms of security. He also wrote that the frozen relations between Georgia and Russia would not be good for the interests of the United States . The letter concluded with the hope that there will be opportunities for dialogue between him and the Secretary of State.

If proved that Bumental indeed lobbied the leader of the Georgian Dream, it would be a violation of federal law.