Prosecutors in Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption trial laid the groundwork Wednesday for some of their star witnesses to soon take the stand, including a former New Jersey attorney general who is expected to testify Thursday.

First prosecutors needed jurors to understand a timeline that included a fatal December 2018 accident when Menendez’s now-wife, Nadine, crashed her car in New Jersey and killed a pedestrian.

Her car was totaled and Nadine was stuck using rentals, borrowing her then-boyfriend Bob Menendez’s ride and telling people she wanted a new Mercedes — a car that, according to one of her own text messages, she could not afford.

Then, according to prosecutors, a New Jersey insurance broker named Jose Uribe stepped in with a bribe. For months, Uribe had been worried about the New Jersey attorney general’s office, which was looking into insurance fraud in the trucking industry.

The point of Uribe’s bribe, prosecutors allege, was to get the senator’s help disrupting a state criminal case and investigation, both related to insurance fraud.

Uribe is cooperating with prosecutors and expected to testify in coming weeks.

Uribe already knew Menendez, for whom he hosted a 2018 cocktail reception fundraiser. According to a timeline from prosecutors, he was suddenly in close contact with Nadine Menendez after her wreck, in part through her friend Wael “Will” Hana, an Egyptian American business person also accused of paying bribes to the Menendezes.

Prosecutors pointed to a flurry of communication in the months after the accident between Nadine Menendez, known as Nadine Arslanian at the time, and Uribe. Punctuating those exchanges were phone records that showed Nadine calling the senator just before or after conversations with Hana and Uribe.

After she’d been sent details of the state criminal case Uribe was interested in, for instance, she called the senator from a flip phone she’d labeled her “007 cell number.” The senator called her back and they talked. Later that afternoon in late January 2019, the senator called then-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.

Grewal is expected to testify next, as soon as Thursday. Prosecutors have said Menendez complained to the attorney general about the criminal case and asked him to get involved. Menendez’s defense team has said the senator was worried about selective prosecution against Latino truckers.

The senator has also tried to distance himself from details of Nadine Menendez’s financial life.

But, according to prosecutors, Menendez knew mundane details of her life, like when she was sorting emails while waiting at a car dealership in Edison, New Jersey, to get the new Mercedes in early April 2019.

A few days earlier, the senator, after a half-hour-long FaceTime call between the couple, texted her an Instagram image of graduation caps being thrown in the air and text that read, “Ask yourself if what you’re doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow.”

In those early April days, Uribe had texted an industry associate and said, “I need 15k cash this afternoon.” When Nadine Menendez made her down payment for the $67,000 car days later, she paid $15,000 using a mix of cash, card and check payments.

A few weeks later, in early May 2019, just before the first monthly payment on the new car was due, Nadine Menendez invited Uribe to have a cigar or drink with the senator.

That evening, someone used her phone to take a photo of Uribe, the senator and Nadine Menendez posing together at a bar, the senator with a cigar in hand.

Minutes earlier, she’d texted Uribe the last four digits of her Social Security number, which Uribe later sent a trucking industry associate.

Together, Uribe or his associate would eventually make dozens of the $800 monthly payments for the Mercedes.

Only after the FBI searched the Menendezes’ house in 2022 did Nadine Menendez take over payments for the car, according to prosecutors.

Even though there was talk of a “007” phone, the details were perhaps not Hollywood enough for the jurors. One appeared to fully nod off during part of the testimony and others seemed to struggle to focus.

The process of entering hundreds of text, phone and bank records into evidence required prosecutors to ask question after question of an FBI special agent, Rachel Graves, who had verified a lengthy spreadsheet summarizing evidence to make sure it matched underlying documents investigators had obtained in their multiyear investigation.

After the jurors had left on a break, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein wondered aloud to prosecutors about their presentation of the case.

“I can only cite what you asked her to read,” the judge said, referring to Graves, “which is: Ask yourself if what you are doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow.”

Menendez’s attorney Adam Fee began cross-examination of the FBI agent on Wednesday by suggesting some of the messages were cherry-picked. The cross examination is expected to continue Thursday.

The timeline also included evidence that Nadine Menendez was sending text messages in the minutes before the fatal 2018 crash. Nadine Menendez had previously been charged for using a cell phone while driving — once in 2021 that she pleaded guilty to, and once in 2016 that was resolved with a plea that wasn’t detailed in records available online.

Jurors in Bob Menendez’s corruption trial weren’t told many details of the accident.

But prosecutors’ timeline showed Nadine Menendez sent a text to a friend at 7:28 p.m. that evening that said, “I am 4 miles away due to two detours.” The accident occurred minutes later.

An attorney for Nadine Menendez did not comment Wednesday on whether she was texting while driving before the 2018 crash. She is also charged in the corruption case but has been diagnosed with breast cancer and is expected to be tried separately later.