When Senator Robert Menendez was charged with conspiring to act as an agent of Egypt, prosecutors included a photograph of a small dinner meeting he held with his soon-to-be wife and three people with ties to Egypt at a steakhouse in Washington, D.C.

The indictment quoted Nadine Menendez, who married the senator in 2020, asking one of their dinner companions: “What else can the love of my life do for you?”

Left unexplained was how prosecutors learned of Ms. Menendez’s comment.

A new court document filed late Monday by federal prosecutors in Manhattan offers a possible explanation.

For the first time, the prosecutors disclosed that a confidential informant had made recordings of conversations and shared details about the case with investigators.

Neither the indictment nor the legal brief gives any indication that the Washington dinner meeting, specifically, was recorded.

But the filing does offer new details about the evidence the government relied on last year when charging Mr. Menendez, his wife and three New Jersey businessmen with participating in a vast, yearslong bribery conspiracy.