Jurors in former Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption trial had access to evidence they should not have seen, federal prosecutors disclosed Wednesday in a surprise legal filing.

During Menendez’s two-month corruption trial, a federal judge ruled that certain evidence could not be shown to jurors without treading on a form of immunity given to members of Congress.

But some of that evidence was inadvertently loaded without redactions onto a laptop that jurors were given for their few days of deliberations. Menendez resigned this summer after jurors found him guilty of bribery, acting as a foreign agent, obstruction of justice, extortion and conspiring to commit those crimes.

Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York said Wednesday that portions of the exhibits at issue would have been “meaningless and impenetrable” if a juror had seen them. One of the things that should have been redacted was a text message with a web address to a CNN article and the CNN logo, for instance, both of which would only have been found amid a lengthy spreadsheet-like exhibit summarizing the government’s evidence in the case.

Plus, prosecutors said, it’s “vanishingly unlikely” that any of the 12 jurors actually saw the evidence anyway. The jury’s laptop contained some 3,000 exhibits, many of them similarly lengthy and dense.

The 11-page letter to District Court Judge Sidney Stein argues even if a juror had seen the evidence, “no action need be taken in light of the error.” Prosecutors cited other court cases to support that argument and also noted that defense attorneys could have caught the error before jury deliberations began but did not.

But because the evidence touches on a constitutional issue Menendez is already trying to use to overturn his convictions, the disclosure may add fuel to Menendez’s fiery appeals.

His legal team is already arguing prosecutors disregarded the Constitution’s “speech or debate” privilege and that swaths of evidence the judge did clearly allow should also not have been shown to jurors.

For jurors to have potentially seen evidence the judge said they shouldn’t have could only bolster that part of Menendez’s argument.

Menendez’s legal team and attorneys for his two co-defendants, who were found guilty of bribing him, did not immediately comment on the prosecutors’ filing.

Sentencing for Menendez is set for late January.