Judge Arthur Engoron, presiding over Trump's $250m (£206m) New York civil fraud case, said the former president could be sent to prison for failing to comply with the partial suppression order.

At the start of October, Judge Engoron ordered a Truth Social post be removed and imposed a limited gag order "with respect to posting or publicly speaking about any member of my staff".

On Friday morning however, the judge noted that the post was still available on Trump's 2024 campaign website, which violated the order. It has since been removed.

Speaking in court, he said: "I ordered him to remove the post immediately and he said he did take it down.

"Despite this order, last night I learned the offending post was never removed from a website. This is a blatant violation of the gag order. I made it clear [that] failure to comply will result in serious sanctions.

"Incendiary untruths can and have led to serious physical harm. I will now allow the defendant to explain why this should not end up with serious sanctions or I could possibly imprison him."

Chris Kise, Trump's lawyer, said: "Based on my understanding this was truly inadvertent.

"The Truth Social post was taken down when the court asked. Truth Social was taken down and Trump never made any more comments about court staff, but it appears no one took it down on the campaign website.

"It is unfortunate and I apologize on behalf of my client."

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In the since-deleted Truth Social blog, Trump attacked the judge's law clerk by sharing a different user's post about her being at an event with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Trump insinuated in the post that the law clerk had a personal relationship with Mr Schumer, a Democrat.

Prosecutors have alleged that the former president, who is currently ahead in the race to become the Republican candidate for the White House next year, committed fraud for years while building his property portfolio.

Trump denies any wrongdoing, called the trial "rigged" and claimed it was brought to court by a "radical lunatic" prosecutor. He returned to Manhattan for the third week of the trial on Tuesday.