There is a place for all these things; but there is distinction between things we know the government has that are not disclosed (eg, the US government has a plan to invade Canada if a crisis warrants it. They might reasonably keep the actual content of the plan secret) vs. secret schemes (it is unknowable what precedent the FISA court has created).
There is a big difference between the two. The first case can be reasonably handled by the democratic process. The second case cannot, and is incompatible with an accountable democracy. People who work against these anti-democratic secrets deserve support even if they are hypocrites; all I ask is that they are effective.
> He worked with the despotic Russian regime...
I find it conspicuous that there is nobody claiming the information in the leaks was false. If the revealing honest thoughts and intentions to the voting public is the scandal (and not the thoughts and intentions themselves) then I don't see why it would influence an election.
If an untimely revelation of facts scuppers the cause, then the cause is not robust and that is the big problem.
If he was at all selective about the information he revealed, that's equivalent to editorializing. A person who reveals a subset of the facts in their possession for the purposes of influencing a political narrative is not a person to be trusted.
Hot take: The organization has always had an agenda. All the big leaks were things that painted the U.S. in a negative light. Just the title of Collateral Murder reads like a Fox News tagline for maximum effect.
I'm not saying the US doesn't have it in for him. I'm not even saying that I trust the US to present a fair case. I'm saying that what he's charged with here matters, and is far different than the persecution of a neutral party that he and others are trying to paint it as.
It's more evidence that he may never have been the white knight that he claimed to be and has possibly always had an agenda.
Assange wasn't simply doing this as a neutral party, however. He was playing the same underhanded games as the governments. He was actively timing the release of information and selectively revealing or withholding information to suit his own political agenda.
I'd grown disenchanted with him well before the 2016 election, but that revealed his hypocritical motivations in all their glory. He worked with the despotic Russian regime and went on a personal attack against Hillary Clinton, timing the release (and non-release) of information to intentionally disrupt the presidential election.
Assange long ago became just another of the underhanded villains he claimed to be fighting against.