On one hand, Assange is a shitty person. One woman woke up to him sticking his dick in her without her consent and without a condom. On the same trip he’d had sex with a different woman who had also insisted on his using a condom, which he reluctantly did… but then the condom mysteriously broke. While a guest of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was hiding out to duck the Swedish charges, he smeared shit on the walls and refused to bathe. He also helped the Russian GRU interfere in the 2016 Presidential Election, either as a useful idiot or a willing collaborator.
On the other hand, as shitty as he is, he was effectively a journalist. With Wikileaks he released leaked footage of a US helicopter firing on civilians in Iraq. He released reports on corruption by Kenyan leaders. He released internal scientology documents. The world needs journalists who will publish stories about things that powerful people, governments and churches don’t want people to know.
On the other, other hand, at times he hung his sources out to dry, like he did with Bradley / Chelsea Manning.
The plea deal he agreed to is bullshit. The charge of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” was basically encouraging a source to leak information to him. That’s journalism. “Conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information” was again, journalism. He was encouraging whistleblowers to report on wrongdoing by the government.
Even the plea deal is bullshit. He pled to violating the espionage act for… what? He didn’t break into anything himself. He wasn’t given a security clearance which he then violated. He wasn’t even American, in America, or working for the government. He was acting as a journalist receiving information from a whistleblower.
So, IMO, there’s nothing much to celebrate here. A shitty person pled to a bullshit charge, setting a bad precedent for journalism, and is now free. Lose, lose.