President-elect Donald Trump will be sentenced on January 10 for 34 counts of falsifying business records, a judge ruled on Friday. This decision almost certainly means Trump will be the first felon to serve as a U.S. president.

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan stated that he does not intend to sentence Trump to jail. Instead, he plans to order an “unconditional discharge,” a designation in New York criminal courts for a non-jail and non-probation sentence that carries no other obligations.

Trump was convicted in May of falsifying business records to conceal a hush-money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. He faced up to four years in prison, but many experts said incarceration was unlikely due to his age and lack of prior convictions.

In his decision, Merchan rejected Trump’s arguments that he should be granted immunity from prosecution as president-elect. Merchan called Trump’s claims a “novel theory” of presidential immunity that would amount to an abuse of his legal discretion.

“The Defendant has presented no valid argument to convince this Court otherwise,” Merchan said. “Binding precedent does not provide that an individual, upon becoming President, can retroactively dismiss or vacate prior criminal acts nor does it grant blanket Presidential-elect immunity.”

SOURCE: Washington Post News.