We just talked about this

[T]he big First Amendment question that has always revolved around Wikileaks and Assange and their involvement in the making previously secret or even classified information available is whether they are considered a publisher or not. If they are then that would essentially mean that Wikileaks is essentially no different from The New York Times or The Washington Post and that their publication of classified information is, legally speaking, no different from what those papers did in the famous Pentagon Papers case. In that case, of course, the Nixon Administration was seeking to block the publication of secret documents related to the Vietnam War that dated back to the mid-1960s when U.S. involvement in the war was just beginning.

In its decision, the Court rejected the Administration’s efforts to prevent publication of the documents and reports about the contents of the documents on the ground that the First Amendment made prior restraints on speech unconstitutional and that the Times and Post could not be punished for publishing classified information that had been provided to it by third parties. If the situation is the same with regard to Wikileaks, then it would be hard to see how the organization or any of its principals could be prosecuted for doing something that the Supreme Court has determined is protected by the First Amendment.

The gray area is if the government determines that Assange simply received the material from one of these “sources” the same way a New York Times reporter might and then published it. Is he guilty of a crime? Personally, I think the court’s decision in New York Times Co. v. United States was a bit of a stretch to begin with, but the newspapers did have one point in their favor. The documents in question were certainly classified, but they were historical in nature.

If the hacking of the DNC emails turns out to be something that Assange didn’t simply receive, but was party to, whether with the Russians or someone else, it’s possible he was conspiring to commit a crime there as well. Whichever way you flip this pancake, I don’t know that it’s a done deal and we can simply assume that the First Amendment would protect Assange for publishing classified material. As with the rest of the rights in the First Amendment, they all have limits.

Bottom line: The government wants to put Julian Assange in jail, and would probably figure out a way to do so if they were able to get him into custody. But it wouldn't be for the obvious reason that people assume, as simply "publishing" material is not illegal, based on USSC precedent.

So the point here being, if it is not illegal for Assange to "publish" this material, then why is special counsel interested in who may have or may not have had inside information regarding what or if Assange was going to eventually publish.

Certainly, you cannot charge someone with aiding and abetting an act that in and of itself is not criminal. This is why people like Andrew McCarthy and others believe that Mueller's purpose at this point has moved from building a criminal case, to writing a politically charged report of behavior that might be best described as "politics as usual".