Assange has problems now because he crosses back and forth between being a journalist and being an activist or political operator. You can not engage in all three pursuits without destroying yourself and/or your credibility as such. I am sympathetic to his attempts to secure his freedom. I am not sympathetic to him cozying up to Trumps people and not being upfront about what he was doing. He either needed to be totally upfront about his efforts to secure his freedom and drop the role of being "journalist" - or if he wants to maintain his journalist integrity, he needs to abandon realpolitick. It's that simple. And I speak from the experience of a journalist that destroyed my life/health in the process of trying to combine being an 'activist' with being a journalist... it just can't be done... something's gotta give when that starts happening.