No, that’s not illegal for somebody without a clearance.
The crime he’s charged with is that he was willing to (and I think did?) assist in breaking into a computer system to get the docs. I think under the CFAA. They have communication records of this because the person he was talking to was working for the USG.
Had he just been accepting docs as he was initially that would have been fine.
It’s hard to know the truth here though when nation state interests are at play. To what extent were the sex related charges against him political or flared up by nation state meddling?
At some point Russia was also using Wikileaks as a place to target the USG with some plausible deniability and Assange’s personal anti-US politics became a corrupting influence too.
The crime he’s charged with is that he was willing to (and I think did?) assist in breaking into a computer system to get the docs. I think under the CFAA. They have communication records of this because the person he was talking to was working for the USG.
Had he just been accepting docs as he was initially that would have been fine.
It’s hard to know the truth here though when nation state interests are at play. To what extent were the sex related charges against him political or flared up by nation state meddling?
At some point Russia was also using Wikileaks as a place to target the USG with some plausible deniability and Assange’s personal anti-US politics became a corrupting influence too.
So, who knows?