Unless I'm misreading, the point of the quoted text isn't to dispute whether that's true. It's specifically to point out that the 2016 election discussion isn't

Unless I'm misreading, the point of the quoted text isn't to dispute whether that's true. It's specifically to point out that the 2016 election discussion isn't relevant to whether an Assange trial today would be a bad thing. If Assange is tried by a Trump DoJ, it almost certainly won't be tied to the 2016 election. Rather, it would be for any of Wikileaks' earlier actions - projects like Cablegate or Collateral Murder. Congressmen have already called for Espionage Act charges over those releases, so it's not a hard outcome to imagine. That would open up a range of alarming questions about handling of classified information, where current practice favors openness and disclosure but the legal situation isn't entirely clear. Narrowly interpreted, transmitting or even linking to classified materials violates secrecy laws even after those materials leave classified control or become publicly accessible. New York Times Co. v. United States set a precedent in which journalists are not prosecuted for handling or publishing leaked materials. Alongside Branzburg v. Hayes and Lovell v. City of Griffin, which extend press rights to citizens generally, it creates a general presumption that only the actual exfiltration of classified material is prosecuted. But NYT v. US was decided narrowly on prior restraint, and no strict protection for publishing already-leaked classified materials exists. Convicting someone for publishing classified materials which someone else leaked to them would effectively destroy this protection. Convicting a non-resident non-citizen on Espionage Act charges would create a bizarre situation in which interference with United States military actions by any party anywhere in the world would ostensibly be a capital crime in the US. Those are the concerns at hand. No matter how guilty someone might be of a specific charge, it's still a serious problem if they're convicted of something unrelated which should never have been a crime.