[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.]

The cache of documents surfaced in 2018 when the F.B.I. searched the home of a senior member of the cultlike group Nxivm.

Photographs from the search showed agents had found a clear plastic box with a red lid in the basement of a home belonging to Nancy Salzman, Nxivm’s co-founder, who was known as “Prefect.”

Inside, agents said, were folders of financial reports labeled with names of journalists, judges, cult experts and others, including Senator Chuck Schumer; the then state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer; and the State Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno.

Most, if not all, of the financial material was inaccurate, an F.B.I. agent, Michael Weniger, said. But Nxivm members appeared to be making a genuine effort to gather information on the targets.