On May 21, 2019, two FBI surveillance teams were sent to the Morton’s steakhouse a few blocks from the White House.

They were not there looking for Sen. Bob Menendez, but then he showed up.

That’s according to testimony Tuesday from an FBI investigator called as a witness in the New Jersey Democrat’s corruption trial.

That evening, two FBI investigators, posing as a husband and wife, were inside the steakhouse eavesdropping on a trio of Egyptian men seated at a table, including one who was the subject of their investigation.

Then Menendez and his now-wife, Nadine, joined the men. And the senator — who infamously goes to Morton’s much of the time he’s in D.C. and charges meals to his political action committee — ended up in the middle of the steakhouse stake out.

Among his dining companions that evening were Egyptian intelligence head Ahmed Helmy; Egyptian diplomat Nader Moussa; and Wael “Will” Hana, an Egyptian-American business person based in New Jersey who had recently been granted a lucrative monopoly by the Egyptian government to oversee American halal meat exports to the country.

It’s unclear who investigators were there to watch. But two of the investigators testified that their target was someone who came in from New York and arrived at the steakhouse in a car with Washington, D.C., diplomatic plates. The FBI couple inside were equipped with a cover story and a concealed video camera that took silent footage. Another investigator was in a van with cameras outside the steakhouse. Another, who did not testify Tuesday, had posed as an Uber driver.

It’s unclear from testimony or other court documents if Menendez was even on the FBI’s radar before the dinner.

But now a fragment of conversation from the dinner is a key piece of prosecutors’ evidence against him and his co-defendant Hana. Federal prosecutors allege Menendez and his wife accepted bribes from Hana to help Egypt obtain American military aid and arms. Nadine Menendez, who was diagnosed with breast cancer, is expected to be tried separately when her health allows.

One of the FBI investigators, Terrie Williams-Thompson, who posed as the wife and at one point got up to follow Nadine Menendez to the bathroom, testified that the men did most of the talking during the dinner. Silent video footage shows Menendez pouring wine and Helmy smoking at the table, which is on the Morton’s patio, where smoking is allowed.

Toward the end of the meal, the five dinner companions were getting louder, and that’s when Williams-Thompson said she overhead Nadine Menendez say, “What else can the love of my life do for you?”

Williams-Thompson said it wasn’t clear who the comment was directed to, but prosecutors point to it as a key piece of evidence in their corruption allegations.

Defense attorneys portrayed the meeting as an innocent one at Menendez’s regular spot — not a shady meeting of criminal co-conspirators. Adam Fee, Menendez’s attorney, told the judge overseeing the case that when the senator is in D.C., he probably eats “at that same restaurant at that same table 250 nights a year.”

Fee told the judge, “you can find Senator Menendez having the same dinner with diplomats and other government officials almost every night of the workweek at Morton’s in Washington, D.C.”