I have been in Kentucky one time.

It was business, not pleasure, and the circumstances were a little unusual. It was January 2016, and I had been invited to give a speech. Not to the general public, but to the entire Kentucky state legislature, on the vexing issue of public corruption. The invitation had come on the heels of our office, SDNY, having convicted at trial the two most powerful men in the New York state legislature – Speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, and Majority Leader of the Senate, Dean Skelos. Those convictions had come after we had sent a slew of other corrupt lawmakers to prison.

It was against that backdrop that Kentucky officials invited me to address the entire legislative body on the occasion of their mandatory ethics training session. I smiled at the idea that Kentucky lawmakers wanted to hear from me before their local New York counterparts, many of whom held me in contempt. In preparing my address, I learned that Kentucky had had its own share of ethics scandals. But rather than do nothing, the state had passed tougher campaign finance laws than New York ever had on the books and instituted restrictions on lobbying, including one known as the “no cup of coffee” rule – a lobbyist can’t so much as buy a cup of joe for a lawmaker. And now they were prepared to hear from a Yankee on how they might do even more.

I started off in the chamber with a joke: “Something like this has always been on my bucket list: To be in a room full of legislators who are required to be here, while I still have subpoena power.” They laughed. I said not to worry. “You are not being wiretapped. At this moment. At least not by my office.” The lawmakers were attentive, receptive, and engaged. There was a spirited question-and-answer session. As the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, “Mr. Bharara drew occasional laughter, nodding approval and gasps of disbelief, particularly when he quoted wiretapped phone conversations and other evidence from recent corruption trials.”  I felt that, as a body, at least at that time, these folks got it much better than the leaders in my own state. I felt welcome. I even tweeted a picture from Kentucky.