Jessie White’s Connection to Shapiro May Be Just a Photo. Joe Bachman Can’t Say the Same.
On July 21, 2026, FBI agents executed a search warrant at a home on the 1800 block of Vista Drive in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. The resident was Jesse J. White, a former four-term Democratic state representative and disbarred attorney.
According to the criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, agents seized two laptops and multiple external hard drives, including a 20-terabyte drive mounted to one of the laptops. The complaint alleges investigators found more than 100 files of child sexual abuse material, organized by category.
The investigation began with a CyberTipline report submitted to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children on June 19 and forwarded to the FBI on July 20. Google had flagged images tied to an account associated with White. Court records describe an image dated January 2019 showing a nude child, and a second image tied to White’s account dated August 2021. According to the affidavit of probable cause, at least one image appeared to have been produced at home rather than downloaded, and agents identified White in part through image metadata.
The affidavit states that when agents spoke with White, he said he used Telegram, qBittorrent, and the Tor browser to access “inappropriate content,” and acknowledged that agents would find child pornography on his devices.
White was arrested Tuesday, July 21. At a detention hearing the following afternoon in federal court in Harrisburg, a judge held him without bail, citing risk of flight and danger to the community. He is charged with receipt and distribution of child pornography and with possession of child pornography. Production of child sexual abuse material is a separate federal offense carrying a fifteen-year mandatory minimum; he has not been charged with it. He has not been convicted of any of the charges filed. His federal public defender, Meredith Gallen, did not return a message seeking comment left by the Observer-Reporter.
Three Months Earlier
On April 14, 2026 — ninety-eight days before FBI agents arrived at his door — a Pennsylvania Disciplinary Board hearing committee filed a report recommending that Jesse White’s law license be restored.
White filed his Petition for Reinstatement on June 2, 2025. The Office of Disciplinary Counsel filed a response on July 30, 2025. A reinstatement hearing was held on December 16, 2025, before a three-member panel: Chair Lauren Kelly Gielarowski, Esq., and members Jason Louis Ott, Esq., and Justin Todd Barron, Esq.
The committee heard testimony from five witnesses and reviewed letters from two additional supporters. Its report, filed April 14, 2026, recommended that reinstatement be granted.
Neither the Office of Disciplinary Counsel nor White’s counsel filed briefs contesting the report. Notes of testimony were received by the Board on June 10, 2026. Forty-one days later, White was in federal custody.
Who Vouched
Six people vouched for Jesse White at his reinstatement hearing — four in person, two by letter. A fifth witness testified: White himself.
Lisa Garcia, White’s treating therapist, testified as an expert regarding his treatment and recovery. The hearing committee’s report records that she described him as “deeply committed to honesty, accountability, communication, emotional regulation, and responsibility within the family,” and opined that he “does not present an unreasonable risk to clients, the public, or the legal profession.”
Dr. Bruce Cohick testified that White presently possesses the qualities of an ethical lawyer — the report summarizes his testimony as citing “integrity, honesty, and hard work” — and that White could resume practice “without posing a risk to clients, the public, or the profession.”
Joseph Bachman, White’s college roommate and closest personal witness, testified to his character and rehabilitation.
Eileen White, his wife, also testified.
Two letters were submitted for the record: one from Daniel Green dated November 18, 2024, and one from Amanda Gilooly dated April 1, 2025. Both described White as being in good standing among professional colleagues.
The hearing committee noted that no attorney character witnesses testified and that White had not worked in the legal field since his disbarment. It acknowledged these as shortcomings, then found they did not overshadow the rest of the evidence. White had explained that his Washington County professional relationships fell away after his disbarment and that he had not yet established new ones in central Pennsylvania. The committee accepted the explanation and concluded he was “sufficiently morally and professionally qualified to resume the practice of law.”
Joe Bachman
Joseph A. Bachman III of Columbia, Pennsylvania, is not just a college friend.
He is the co-founder and managing partner of Polaris Strategy Group, a Democratic consulting firm that has received approximately $1.6 million in tracked Pennsylvania committee payments. He is a co-founder of Defend Our Courts, a judicial independent expenditure committee that spent on the 2025 Pennsylvania Supreme Court retention race. He appeared on House Democratic Campaign Committee payroll in 2010. He managed Tom Houghton’s 2014 congressional campaign and Mike Parrish’s 2016 congressional campaign in PA-6. He was a paid consultant to Justice Kevin Dougherty’s 2015 Supreme Court campaign.
Bachman met Jesse White on the first day of freshman year at Washington & Jefferson College, where they were next-door roommates. They pledged the same fraternity and served together in campus leadership. Bachman helped White politically when White first ran for office.
When White’s misappropriation of client funds came to light in 2017, Bachman testified, he was among the first people White called.
At the December hearing, Bachman testified that since the disbarment he and White had worked together on three projects: a congressional campaign, a county commissioner campaign, and a judicial-retention independent expenditure effort.
One of those is documented in Federal Election Commission filings. On the 2024 Shamaine Daniels for Congress campaign in PA-10, White’s political consulting firm, Perpetual Fortitude, was paid $7,206 for texting services on April 24, 2024. Bachman’s Polaris Strategy Group was paid $2,850 for digital advertising on April 30, 2024. It is the only committee that paid both firms in the same cycle.
The county commissioner reference is consistent with Harlan Shober’s Washington County campaign, White’s only county commissioner client, which paid Perpetual Fortitude $10,000 — though Bachman does not appear in that committee’s finance data. The judicial-retention effort is Defend Our Courts, which Bachman co-founded and for which Polaris served as the $1.14 million lead vendor; no public record places White inside it. Both rest on Bachman’s testimony alone.
Bachman told the hearing committee that White was “completely taking responsibility” and was “very remorseful,” and that the remorse was not fear of getting caught. He testified he was confident White would seek help again if he ever struggled.
Last Offense
Jesse White was disbarred for stealing from his clients.
According to the Statement of Facts he signed and acknowledged as true, White was entrusted with a total of $118,297.86 on behalf of five clients between November 2015 and December 2016. The funds were held in his IOLTA account — the trust account Pennsylvania attorneys are required to maintain for money that belongs to clients.
By March 21, 2016, the balance in that account had fallen to $3.61. By December 30, 2016, White had misappropriated $105,343.89 in entrusted funds. As of January 18, 2017, while he still held obligations of $117,895.36, the account balance was $21,448.86 — a deficiency of $96,446.50.
The money went to casinos.
In early January 2017, the Office of Disciplinary Counsel opened an inquiry into an unrelated disciplinary matter and requested his IOLTA records. White testified later that he knew immediately what those records would show. He contacted his counsel, produced the records, and admitted the misconduct. By March 8, 2017, he had obtained sufficient funds to cover the entrustments and deposited them into the account.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania placed him on emergency temporary suspension on March 15, 2017, and disbarred him on consent on June 26, 2017. In his resignation statement, White wrote that he was resigning because he knew he “could not successfully defend himself against the charges of professional misconduct.”
He was a bankruptcy attorney. His practice was built on representing people in financial collapse.
Gaming The System
The clients were made whole. Jesse White was not the one who made them whole.
When White’s license was suspended, a conservator — attorney David Posner — was appointed to wind down his practice. According to White’s own reinstatement petition, the conservator, not White, disbursed the funds owed to the five clients. The Final Report of the Conservator was filed with the Washington County Court of Common Pleas on January 5, 2018.
Other former clients presented claims to the Pennsylvania Lawyers Fund for Client Security, the statewide fund that reimburses people whose attorneys steal from them. The Fund paid those claims. White then owed the Fund.
He took six years to pay it back.
Fund records show awards and payments running from November 2016 through 2022, with a principal balance of $37,718.21 outstanding and interest accruing under Rule of Disciplinary Enforcement 531 at daily rates the Fund tracked to the dollar. By March 22, 2023, the accrued interest alone had reached $17,333.51.
On that date, White paid the balance with a Wells Fargo cashier’s check for $55,202.97 — covering the $37,718.21 principal and $17,333.51 in interest, plus an overage the Fund refunded after discovering it had omitted an earlier payment from its ledger.
He paid it with his state pension. According to his brief to the hearing committee, after making partial payments toward the debt, White “used his state pension to pay off the Client Security Fund in full.”
Fourteen months after the check cleared, he filed to get his law license back.
The Petition for Reinstatement requires a letter from the Fund confirming that full restitution has been made. Without the March 2023 payment, White could not have filed the petition he filed in June 2025.
The Photo
A photograph exists of Jesse White with Governor Josh Shapiro.
Shapiro represented the 153rd District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 2005 until January 2012. White represented the 46th District from January 2007 until January 2015. They served together in the House Democratic caucus for five years.
That is the extent of what the public record establishes about the relationship.
The Silence
Joseph Bachman — the only one of White’s witnesses with documented, ongoing professional and financial ties to him — has not publicly commented since the charges were filed.
Lauren Kelly Gielarowski, Jason Louis Ott, and Justin Todd Barron, the three hearing committee members who recommended reinstatement, have not publicly commented.
Amy Joann Coco, who has represented White since 2017, has not publicly commented.
Lisa Garcia and Dr. Bruce Cohick, who testified to his rehabilitation, have not publicly commented.
Governor Shapiro’s office has not publicly commented.