Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are lots of clues that indicates they have the right guy, or one of the guys. For intellectual honesty "commit espionage against the United States" is not the choice of words I'd use.
Why mince words? It's literally the definition of espionage. Intentionally collecting secret material and distributing it is simply spying. He may have thought he was serving some higher good, but that's hardly uncommon among spies.
When I say someone is a spy I mean "someone sold secrets to a foreign power". When a US judge says someone is a spy it roughly means "someone divulged classified information and/or ....".
The law considers divulging secrets as espionage because loose lips sink ships: using the espionage act to prosecute anyone posing a threat to national security is the easiest (and practical) way to make a danger harmless.
The main issue with defining espionage like this is the logical confusion that creates in people: quoting Daniel Ellsberg "the current state of whistleblowing prosecutions under the Espionage Act makes a truly fair trial wholly unavailable to an American who has exposed classified wrongdoing".
It's not my job to rule if someone is a whistleblower, a spy, or someone who protests against things he deems wrong through the disclosure of classified material. What I know is that the US law is bad because it does not distinguish between "someone who sold secrets to a foreign power" and "someone who divulged classified information": these are fundamentally different (illegal) things.
The whole situation gets worse when anybody gets to read stuff like "5. FBI told plaintiff they could not afford another Snowden" and "6. FBI steal plaintiff's cell phone and passport" (https://imgur.com/RMJk7QC).
It's ironic that the onion is "ciadotgov + 4SJW + __ ".