I think it's less Assange having a specific pro-Russian agenda and more him rather enjoying the opportunity to make trouble for politicians and Russian affiliates being more than happy to assist him with that. The traditional Russian term for political radicals whose agitation tended to serve their state's agenda despite very different ideals is popularly translated as "useful idiot"
Well, at least in that case, I think the Russian translates more literally to "ineffectual fool".
On a more serious note: did Wikileaks actually release the Macron files? I seem to remember they were only cheerleading it. But if they did, it's probably the nail in the coffin for their reputation, considering it was obvious for even casual observers to see that the dump contained altered documents, and that the leakers only had the intention of derailing the democratic process, willing to misinform people on the way.
Wikileaks didn't release the cache, but they certainly did their best to boost its credibility with tweets like "We have not yet discovered fakes in #MacronLeaks & we are very skeptical that the Macron campaign is faster than us" (yeah, because there's no way alleged senders and recipients of emails could spot fakes faster than people analysing the meta data...) and the outstanding "assessment update: several Office files have Cyrillic meta data. Unclear if by design, incompetence, or Slavic employee."
Of course, it's entirely within Wikileaks' remit to process and publicise leaked information regardless of origin and leakers' suspected motives, but even as they asserted their experience in assessing leaked material they seemed far less willing to question what they were reading than everyone else...
> yeah, because there's no way alleged senders and recipients of emails could spot fakes faster than people analysing the meta data...
You're absolutely right, and in fact all the Macron campaign would need to do is point out a handful of them and it would call in to question the veracity of all of them. Did they do that though, or did they just insinuate that there might be fakes (like the DNC did but couldn't actually back up with evidence).
The few interesting titbits promoted by Macron's opponents (supposed offshore bank accounts, membership of gay mailing lists and an aide's supposed Bitcoin drug orders) have all been quite thoroughly debunked as crude forgeries and documents in the archive even linked to specific Russian security companies by media, security consultants and even pretty radical pro-leak publications like the Intercept. The Macron campaign even shared the phishing emails they'd received.
Wikileaks and their much trumpeted reputation for authenticating stuff's contribution to this was to deny anything they'd looked at was fake (possibly true if they only looked at the banal campaign material) and suggest the Cyrillic headers on attachments might have been evidence that Macron had Slavic employees...
I absolutely understand he coordinates with Russia, just that it wasn't some surprising development. He has a long history cooperating with dictatorships, just that it wasn't objectionable to his then fans. Nothing has changed, except the pro-liberty, pro-privacy, Guy Fawkes mask-wearing crowd is on the receiving end of his treatment now.
