'That very lie is a federal crime': Analyst lays out NY AG lawyer’s 'persuasive' point against Trump

Former litigator and MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin has been following closely along with ex-President Donald Trump's New York civil fraud trial for months, which began closing arguments Thursday, January 11.

Ahead of the arguments, Rubin shared via X (formerly Twitter), "Kevin Wallace is about to begin for the Attorney General’s office. He says this is deja vu because all of the arguments have been made before. And the law of the case remains that the statements of financial condition were false and misleading for years."

The legal analyst spoke with MSNBC's Chris Hayes about what she saw in the courtroom, suggesting she was impressed with remarks from one of the prosecutors.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

"One of the things I thought that was persuasive is at the end of his argument today Kevin Wallace, who's one of the lawyers for the attorney general's office, said we have a federal statute against federal for fraud," Rubin said. "If you submit a credit application to a bank and you lie on it, that is a federal crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison. And it doesn't matter whether the bank even grants you credit, that very lie is a federal crime. We don't necessitate in our legal system that there be a victim for that crime. And so to hear it doesn't matter that Deutsche Bank is somehow not identifying itself as a victim, what matters is the integrity of the marketplace and deterring people from doing this behavior. Because, of course if everybody could lie, then our markets would not be functional. And that's the argument they really tried to make."

Watch the video below or at this link.

'That very lie is a federal crime': Analyst lays out NY AG lawyer's 'persuasive' point against Trumpwww.youtube.com

READ MORE: 'Control your client': Judge cuts off Trump’s outburst during civil fraud trial closing arguments