A New York appeals court judge on Thursday paused gag orders on Donald J. Trump and his lawyers that had prevented them from commenting on court staff in the civil fraud trial of the former president.
The order against Mr. Trump was issued on the trial’s second day by the presiding judge, Arthur F. Engoron, after Mr. Trump attacked the judge’s law clerk in a social media post accusing her of being a Democratic partisan. It prohibited Mr. Trump from any further attacks on the clerk and other court staff.
Mr. Trump has twice violated the order, incurring $15,000 in fines. The judge later issued a similar order against Mr. Trump’s lawyers, barring them from commenting on his private communications with court staff.
This week, Mr. Trump’s lawyers challenged both of those orders in an appeals court and on Thursday, the appellate judge, David Friedman, paused them after an hourlong oral argument.
The decision left Mr. Trump free, for the moment, of all of the gag orders placed on him. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court temporarily froze the order issued against him in his election interference case in Washington.
About an hour after the New York gag order was paused, Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, posted on social media attacking Ms. Greenfield, calling her a “Democrat Operative.”
Later, shortly before 7 p.m., Mr. Trump himself seized on the pause by posting a message on his Truth Social platform in which he called Ms. Greenfield “politically biased,” “out of control” and a “disgrace.”
The New York gag orders will be evaluated by a full appellate panel, which may reimpose them. But in the meantime, Mr. Trump and his lawyers are again free to attack court staff, most prominently the law clerk, Allison Greenfield, who since Mr. Trump’s original post has become a magnet for right-wing attacks on the case.
The schedule set by the appeals court means that the gag orders could remain paused for much of the remainder of the civil fraud trial, which stems from a lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James. The trial is expected to last until mid-December.
Justice Engoron, who is a Democrat, had justified his own gag 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 Justice Friedman seemed skeptical that Mr. Trump had said anything that would lead directly to threats against court staff. He repeatedly asked whether Mr. Trump had used specifically 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 appellate court after the Thursday hearing and quickly took advantage of the development.
Ms. Greenfield “is in the judge’s ear time and time again,” Ms. Habba said. “If she had a real threat, she should get off the bench.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers this week in a separate filing asked for a mistrial, saying that both Justice Engoron and Ms. Greenfield were biased against them. The gag order had barred Mr. Trump’s lawyers from publicly discussing some of the specifics of their arguments concerning Ms. Greenfield, but they will now be free to do so.
Last month, after the judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s federal election interference case briefly paused a gag order she had imposed on him, the former president used the window of opportunity to launch a spree of attacks against the people who had been off limits.
Three times in three days, he called the special counsel, Jack Smith, who had brought the case, “deranged.” Twice, he weighed in 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 put the order back in place, though it has been frozen again as a federal appeals court considers whether Judge Chutkan properly imposed it in the first place.
Justice Engoron imposed his own gag order on Mr. Trump on Oct. 3, after the former president posted a picture of Ms. Greenfield with Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader. The image had originally appeared on Ms. Greenfield’s Instagram account.
Mocking her as “Schumer’s girlfriend,” Mr. Trump said that the case against him should be dismissed. After Justice Engoron was alerted that day, Mr. Trump removed the post from social media.
Justice Friedman appeared to agree with Mr. Trump’s lawyers that the gag orders had not been warranted. At one point, he seemed to indicate that he held Ms. Greenfield responsible for the former president’s social media post, given that the picture of her with Mr. Schumer had come from her own Instagram account.
“If you put something out in public and then it goes viral, who’s responsible for that?” he asked.