Sure, they can try to twist some other law to allow them to criminalize speech. They succeeded with convicting Douglas Mackey of “election interference” for posting a meme, after all. That will certainly get thrown out on appeal though. But I guess they could take a similar approach during election season to harass their political enemies and discourage anyone else from using social media effectively against them.
By the time the appeals get through (if people have the money to fight that long), the election will be over and they’ll have achieved what they needed. Of course, if everyone was aware of their 1st Amendment rights and just kept on saying what the left doesn’t want to hear, whether there are threats of arrest or not, then their scheme fails.
They haven’t silenced Tucker or Bongino. They’ve alienated Roseanne and pushed her rightward, but she’s not shutting up, even though she’s just got a podcast now. There’s a bunch of people that they’ve failed to silence. They’re not silencing us.