By doing this the US is coming to the aid of the many dictators and despots whose crimes Assange has helped reveal.
Also, by ignoring the crimes revealed by the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, the US makes it very clear that war-making cronies rule both parties and would never hold each other accountable for anything.
To be clear, the war logs revealed that the US classified information solely because it revealed that the official narrative about why we were involved in those wars was false. Regardless of what one thinks about Assange, it's pretty hard to argue that the crimes revealed by the war logs aren't highly worrisome.
Regardless of how one feels about Assange, it's hard to deny that WL was the most successful attempt by any journalist to unmask the widespread US war crimes that we've seen in many decades.
My statement above may be too strong... so be it, but surely a court should have been able to decide the fate of the propagandists who misused their power to classify information from the American people. Instead the war criminals just attacked Assange and everyone else including most journalists do as they are asked and turned on a fellow journalist who was willing to sacrifice his freedom for the cause of truth.