If I come to your house for dinner, and am an asshole to you and your family, do we need to get the law involved or should you just not invite me over for dinner again?
No. This is equivalent to a threat to strike. RMS without the GNU project maintainers is just a dude with a blog. And this approximates a vote of no confidence.
One strike and your out isn't even how we play baseball.
Maybe I'm too trusting. I have no evidence that kind of a convo happened. But the allegations are that RMS has been a missing stair for well over 20 years. I find it very hard to believe that someone who's been causing problems in a community for 20+ years has never had a friend pull them aside and ask them to change their behaviour.