Sen. Bob Menendez pressured ex-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal to speak about an active criminal probe during a meeting in 2019 that the top prosecutor’s deputy called “gross,” a court heard Thursday.

“I can’t talk to you about this,” Grewal, testifying at the embattled pol’s federal bribery trial in Manhattan, recalled telling the powerful then-head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Menendez, 70, had asked him to discuss an “pending criminal matter” in a Sept.6, 2019 meeting at the veteran Democrat’s Newark office, Grewal told jurors.

After the meeting wrapped, Grewal’s deputy, Andrew Bruck, quipped, “Whoa, that was gross” outside Menendez’s office before the pair stepped into a waiting car, Grewal testified.

Menendez had tried during the 10-to-15-minute meeting to bring up a specific case after griping to Grewal – without providing any evidence – that New Jersey state insurance fraud authorities were unfairly targeting Hispanic defendants, Grewal testified.

Grewal told jurors that he shut down the conversation after Menendez confirmed to him that he wanted to discuss a specific case – which Grewal considered inappropriate.

The former AG said he told Menendez that the investigated party’s lawyer should contact the attorneys handling the probe.

The senator never actually made any “specific asks” for Grewal to kill an investigation, he testified. But “the impression I got was that he did not like the way it was being handled.”

Grewal, 50, who now directs the Enforcement Division for the US Securities and Exchange Commission, added that Menendez had also brought up the same issue about alleged mistreatment of Hispanic defendants – again, providing no evidence – after calling him on his cellphone a few months earlier.

The senator’s concern about insurance fraud was not a coincidence, the feds say.

Months before the Newark meeting, in April 2019, a former insurance agent named Jose Uribe handed Menendez’s wife Nadine $15,000 in cash to be used toward the down payment on a Mercedes-Benz C-class convertible.

Uribe has admitted as part of a plea deal that he made the payment in a bid to influence the powerful lawmaker to protect one of Uribe’s colleagues from a state insurance fraud probe.

“I knew that giving a car in return for influencing a United States senator to stop a criminal investigation was wrong, and I deeply regret my actions,” he said at a hearing in March. 

After finalizing the purchase of the convertible, Nadine messaged her husband, “Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes,” calling him “the love of my life” in French. She texted the senator a picture of the luxury car, along with a heart emoji, the indictment states.

Uribe is expected to take the stand as a government witness at some point Friday, after prosecutors first call an FBI fingerprint expert to the stand.

Menendez, wearing a dark blue suit and pink tie, kept his cool during Grewal’s testimony, occasionally chatting with or passing notes to his lawyer Adam Fee.

He faces a potential decades-long prison sentence if convicted on all counts of a sprawling bribery indictment charging him with accepting the Mercedes, gold bars and cash in exchange for favors to New Jersey businessmen and the governments of Egypt and Qatar.

He has pleaded not guilty and mounted a surprising defense during last month’s opening statements, where he blamed his wife for the gold bars, claiming she had stashed away the trove without his knowledge.