SCOTUS has outlined tests to determine whether speech is protected or not. These don't necessarily require violence to actually taken place as a result.
> Under the imminent lawless action test, speech is not protected by the First Amendment if the speaker intends to incite a violation of the law that is both imminent and likely
It passes the imminence test which was further defined in Hess. It might fail the likelihood test, but of course, there was no legal action taken against this person so we're just making hypotheticals about what would happen if they did take legal action.
1A protects you from laws or actions that prohibit your speech, they don't protect you from people asking you not to engage in that speech.
It does protect you from the government asking you not to engage in speech. The fact that no legal action was taken is what makes this behavior blatantly unconstitutional. If it was against the law, DHS would have arrested her- instead they made vague threats about charging her under a law dealing with conspiring to murder federal law enforcement. Any government policy that creates a chilling effect on a protected right is unconstitutional, regardless of any charge or court case.
LE can use discretion when investigating cases that they believe may break the law, and they can give people warnings.
As I understand, other SCOTUS rulings on chilling effects all pertain to political speech that were otherwise clearly and unquestionably legal.
I think we’d need to have more information about the process and procedure that took place here to determine whether this letter was sent in bad faith or not.
This very obviously doesn't apply in this case.