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Former State Department Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Hillary Clinton take a break in a hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Oct. 22, 2015. | Getty Testimony: Clinton aides worried about her email system after Guccifer hack

Aides to Hillary Clinton worried about the potential impact on her private email system after a hacker gained access to the email account of one of her longtime advisers in early 2013, according to testimony made public Wednesday in connection with a pending lawsuit.

Former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills acknowledged in written answers to questions from the conservative group Judicial Watch that when emails from Clinton ally Sidney Blumenthal began appearing online via a Romanian hacker called Guccifer, Mills discussed the issue with Bryan Pagliano, a tech specialist who worked both at the State Department and for the Clintons.

“In or around March 2013, when the email account of Sidney Blumenthal was compromised by a hacker known as Guccifer. As I recall, these discussions involved whether this event might affect Secretary Clinton’s email,” Mills said in the written answers. The response, dated July 11 and released Wednesday by Judicial Watch, was a follow-up to questions Mills declined to answer at a May deposition in a Freedom of Information Act suit brought by the group.

It was already known that Clinton’s camp was aware of Guccifer’s hack of Blumenthal and took at least one step in response: changing Clinton's email address because it was exposed in messages in Blumenthal’s account. It’s unclea whether Clinton aides took any other security steps at the time.

The March 2013 discussions took place a month or two after Clinton stepped down as secretary of state. Mills left State shortly after Clinton.

Mills agreed to answer the written questions from Judicial Watch in order to head off further litigation in the case about whether her answers were sufficiently complete. At the May deposition, she and her lawyer declined to answer some questions citing attorney-client privilege.

The deposition took place a few days after Romanian national Marcel Lazar pled guilty to hacking offenses in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. He was extradited from his home country to the U.S. in March to face the charges, which included hacking into email accounts belonging to Blumenthal as well as former Secretary of State Colin Powell and a relative of former Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush.

Lazar claimed in media interviews aired earlier this year that he also hacked into the Democratic presidential candidate’s personal server. However, that claim has not been verified. FBI Director James Comey said in Congressional testimony last month that Lazar admitted lying on that point. A spokesman for Clinton’s presidential campaign has also rejected the idea that Lazar ever made it into her server.

Lazar is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 1 and faces a sentence of two to seven years in prison. He could be returned to Romania to serve out a portion of his sentence.

Judicial Watch is still pressing a federal judge to force Clinton to submit to a sworn deposition in the case. He has not yet ruled on the request.