Trump to be sentenced today on felony charges — 10 days before his inauguration

President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to be sentenced Friday morning on felony charges — a history-making moment he had tried desperately to make sure wouldn't happen before his inauguration 10 days from now.

The sentencing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. ET in New York criminal court, with Trump attending remotely.

Trump’s attorneys had repeatedly sought to stay the proceeding, which state Judge Juan Merchan scheduled last week. Their appeals to Merchan, two state appeals courts and even the country’s highest court over the past week were unsuccessful. Trump's last hope, the U.S. Supreme Court, declined to block the proceeding in a 5-4 ruling late Thursday.

Had the sentencing been postponed until after Trump’s inauguration, his lawyers would have been able to argue that presidential immunity and his duties as commander in chief should bar the proceeding from happening.

The sentencing means Trump will make some ignominious history before he becomes only the second president to be sworn in for two nonconsecutive terms: He'll be the only president to have been sentenced on criminal charges.

Trump, in remarks to the media from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruling, alluded to the possibility of further appeals, such as an attempt to appeal the verdict itself.

“So I’ll do my little thing tomorrow. They can have fun with their political opponent,” he said.

Merchan isn’t expected to sentence Trump to any jail time. He said in a decision last week ordering the sentencing to proceed that he would most likely give Trump an unconditional discharge, a sentence that allows the conviction to stand with no further penalties.

He is, however, likely to blast Trump for both the conduct that led to his conviction in May and his behavior during and after the trial.

Responding last week in his ruling to Trump's argument that the charges weren’t serious and that they should be dismissed, Merchan wrote, "12 jurors unanimously found Defendant guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records with the intent to defraud, which included an intent to commit or conceal a conspiracy to promote a presidential election by unlawful means. It was the premeditated and continuous deception by the leader of the free world that is the gravamen of this offense."

"To vacate this verdict on the grounds that the charges are insufficiently serious given the position Defendant once held, and is about to assume again, would constitute a disproportionate result and cause immeasurable damage to the citizenry's confidence in the Rule of Law," he wrote.

He also took Trump to task for his attacks on the judicial system.

"Defendant's disdain for the Third Branch of government, whether state or federal, in New York or elsewhere, is a matter of public record. Indeed, Defendant has gone to great lengths to broadcast on social media and other forums his lack of respect for judges, juries, grand juries and the justice system as a whole," Merchan wrote, saying he'd repeatedly found Trump in contempt for violating his partial gag order in the case "despite repeated admonitions."

Trump, he noted, has continued to call the order "unlawful" and "unconstitutional," even though "it has been challenged and upheld by the Appellate Division First Department and the New York Court of Appeals, no less than eight times."

"Indeed, as Defendant must surely know, the same Order was left undisturbed by the United States Supreme Court on December 9, 2024. Yet Defendant continues to undermine its legitimacy, in posts to his millions of followers," Merchan wrote. 

Trump attorney Todd Blanche said at an appeals court hearing seeking to block the sentencing this week that he was skeptical Merchan would give Trump an unconditional discharge.

“I don’t know how anyone can give any weight to that,” Blanche said.

In his ruling last Friday, Merchan noted that a sentence of incarceration is "authorized by the conviction" but said it is also an alternative that even prosecutors "no longer view as a practicable recommendation" given Trump's imminent swearing-in.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told reporters Thursday, "We believe that the sanctity of the jury verdict must be given primacy, must be upheld as part of the rule of law, but we’re also mindful of and respect the institution of the presidency." 

Trump's conviction arose from charges that he falsified business records related to hush money his former attorney Michael Cohen gave porn star Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Daniels testified that she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, which he has denied.

The case was one of four criminal cases Trump was facing at the beginning of 2024 and the only one that went to trial.

A state case charging Trump interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia is paused as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is challenging an appeals court order that removed her and her office from the case last month.

The Justice Department dropped two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith after Trump won the election, citing its Office of Legal Counsel's holding that it can’t prosecute a sitting president.