U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara delivered a keynote address Tuesday before some of the city's top politicians.
The event was hosted by City and State Magazine in celebration of its 10th anniversary.
Some elected officials who appeared at the event include City Comptroller Scott Stringer, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
Bharara was presented with the publication's "Newsmaker of the Decade" award.
During his speech, he praised the media for putting issues in the spotlight, like the Buffalo Billion corruption case he brought last week involving some of Governor Andrew Cuomo's aides.
"We arrested nine people last week, and I never got the question at the press conference, 'How did you start that investigation?'" Bharara said. "That case got started because journalists in Buffalo and elsewhere started to write that there were shenanigans they believed that were going on with the bidding of contracts in Buffalo. And you know what we did? We started to investigate."
Bharara told reporters he loves his job and suggested he would never run for political office.