I don't think there is much difference in the crime committed.
But intend can matter if you are caught can influence where in the possible range of penalties the judge will judge you.
There is also a chance the site provider and actual hacker/torrent provider are not the same person, in which case if they go after the site provider they could argue they just did automatized journalistic work with reasonable journalistic standards (not sure if that will work, but it would be worth a try; also only relevant if they are two different people).
Lastly the hacker might be very inexperienced/didn't really expect much success which also could explain the current outcome.
There is also the point that a website might be indexed by bots/search engines, the torrent might not and this could cause some problems. E.g. very very early one the AfD was not yet clear right radical and the mails date back to this time. If someone hat interactions with them only then but now get indexed by some search/ai which lets say an employer uses to screen hires this could have very bad consequences for that person without them having done anything wrong (if their connection to it really was only during the very very early days).
But intend can matter if you are caught can influence where in the possible range of penalties the judge will judge you.
There is also a chance the site provider and actual hacker/torrent provider are not the same person, in which case if they go after the site provider they could argue they just did automatized journalistic work with reasonable journalistic standards (not sure if that will work, but it would be worth a try; also only relevant if they are two different people).
Lastly the hacker might be very inexperienced/didn't really expect much success which also could explain the current outcome.
There is also the point that a website might be indexed by bots/search engines, the torrent might not and this could cause some problems. E.g. very very early one the AfD was not yet clear right radical and the mails date back to this time. If someone hat interactions with them only then but now get indexed by some search/ai which lets say an employer uses to screen hires this could have very bad consequences for that person without them having done anything wrong (if their connection to it really was only during the very very early days).