Trump’s Circle Immediately Attacks Clerk After Silence Order Interrupts

A New York appeals court judge on Thursday suspended gag orders against Donald J. Trump and his lawyers, which had prevented them from commenting on court personnel in the civil fraud trial of the former president.

The order against Mr. Trump was issued by the presiding judge, Arthur F. Engoron, on the second day of the trial, after Mr. Trump attacked the judge’s clerk in a social media post accusing her of being a Democratic partisan are. It banned Mr Trump from further attacks on the clerk and other court staff.

Mr. Trump has violated the order twice, resulting in a $15,000 fine. The judge later issued a similar order against Mr. Trump’s lawyers, banning them from commenting on his private communications with court staff.

This week, Mr. Trump’s lawyers challenged both orders at an appeals court, and on Thursday, appellate judge David Friedman paused them after an hour-long oral argument.

The decision meant that Trump was temporarily free from all silence orders imposed on him. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court temporarily froze the injunction issued against him in his Washington election interference case.

The New York gag orders will be reviewed by a full appeals panel, which could reimpose them. But in the meantime, Mr. Trump and his lawyers are once again free to attack court staff, especially Clerk Allison Greenfield, who has become a magnet for right-wing attacks on the case since Mr. Trump’s original post.

The schedule set by the appeals court means the silence orders could be suspended for much of the remainder of the civil fraud trial, which stems from a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The trial is expected to last until mid-December.

Judge Engoron, a Democrat, had justified his own silence order against Mr. Trump by citing threats against his staff. He wrote this month that his chambers had received “hundreds of threatening phone calls, voicemails, emails, letters and packages.”

But Judge Friedman seemed skeptical that Trump had said anything that would directly lead to threats against court staff. He repeatedly asked whether Mr. Trump had specifically used threatening language against Ms. Greenfield, who is also a Democrat, and seemed satisfied that the answer was no.

A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Alina Habba, praised the appeals court after Thursday’s hearing and was quick to take advantage of the development.

Ms. Greenfield “is in the judge’s ear over and over again,” Ms. Habba said. “If she had a real threat, she would have to leave the bench.”

About an hour after the gag order was suspended, Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, said posted on social media attacking Ms Greenfieldand called it a ‘Democratic Operation’.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers filed for a mistrial this week in a separate filing, saying both Judge Engoron and Ms. Greenfield were biased against them. The silence order had barred Mr. Trump’s lawyers from publicly discussing some details of their arguments regarding Ms. Greenfield, but they will now be free to do so.

Last month, after the judge overseeing Trump’s federal election interference case briefly halted a gag order she had imposed on him, the former president took the opportunity to launch a series of attacks against the people who were off limits been.

Three times in three days he called the special prosecutor, Jack Smith, who brought the case, “deranged.” Twice he spoke about testimony attributed to his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who could be a witness in the trial.

The violations prompted Mr. Smith’s team to ask the judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, to reinstate the gag order. She reinstated the order, though it has been frozen again as a federal appeals court considers whether Judge Chutkan was justified in imposing it in the first place.

Judge Engoron imposed his own gag order on Mr. Trump on Oct. 3 after the former president posted a photo of Ms. Greenfield with Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader. The image originally appeared on Ms Greenfield’s Instagram account.

While deriding her as “Schumer’s girlfriend,” Trump said the case against him should be dismissed. After Judge Engoron was warned that day, Mr. Trump deleted the post from social media.

Judge Friedman appeared to agree with Trump’s lawyers that the silence orders were not justified. At one point, he appeared to indicate that he held Ms. Greenfield responsible for the former president’s social media post, since the photo of her with Mr. Schumer came from her own Instagram account.

“If you make something public and it goes viral, who is responsible for that?” he asked.