<p>Hillary Clinton isn't accused of doing anything illegal in the Gawker stories. And Blumenthal's advocacy appears to have been pretty tame, consisting of passing on the statements of a third individual who, it was acknowledged openly, worked for Ivanishvili. But the White House, as Gawker notes, had rejected Clinton's efforts to hire Blumenthal in an official capacity. So you have the Secretary of State using an off-books email account to discuss national policy with someone who wasn't a government employee, was known to be disliked by the president's staff, and who might have been violating an actual law by participating in the conversation. That's probably not something Clinton is going to brag about in campaign commercials. It's also exactly the kind of foreign entanglement that critics have warned she is susceptible to—of being unduly influenced by financial connections, via the Clinton Foundation, to foreign interests. Blumenthal is a longtime Clinton-family ally and appears to have described himself as an adviser to the Clinton Foundation on more than one occasion.</p>