A former Pennsylvania lawmaker is facing federal child pornography charges after FBI agents discovered more than 100 files of sexually explicit content on his personal electronic devices – including nude photos of minors as young as 7 years old, new court documents stunningly allege.
Ex-Democratic state Rep. Jesse White was taken into federal custody after authorities found the twisted content – which he sorted by age and category – on numerous laptops and hard drives inside his Upper Allen Township home Tuesday, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
White allegedly admitted to investigators that he collected the sickening pictures and videos while scouring the “dark” web using accounts on encrypted applications including Qbittorrent – a peer-to-peer file sharing program – Telegram and the Tor browser, the doc states.
The repulsive content included videos of minors between 7 and 15 years old engaged in sexually explicit activities and naked photos of girls between the ages of 8 and 14, according to the complaint.
The FBI probe kicked off after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received an anonymous cyber tip alleging homemade child porn on Sunday, along with an image of a boy between 5 and 6 years old naked in the shower, the doc states.
Metadata taken from the photo – in which a white man wearing a wedding band was also visible – revealed it was snapped on a phone registered to White in January 2019, according to investigators.
Another cyber tip submitted during the White investigation showed a second nude image of a boy who was about 9 to 11 years old when it was taken in August 2021, the documents state.
“Jesse White has two minor male children,” an FBI investigator noted in the complaint.
The disgraced pol was hit with possession of child pornography and receipt and distribution of child pornography charges.
He was assigned a federal public defender after stating he was unable to afford a private attorney, according to court documents.
He is expected to appear in the Harrisburg federal courthouse for a detention hearing on Wednesday afternoon.
White previously represented Pennsylvania’s 46th District – which covers parts of Allegheny, Beaver and Washington counties – from 2007 to 2015.
The father of two, who was married to wife Eileen while serving in the House of Representatives, was disbarred as an attorney in 2017 after he was found to have misused $100,000 in client funds to support an out-of-control gambling addiction, according to reports.
He applied for reinstatement in March, Disciplinary Board of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court documents show. The outcome of that petition wasn’t immediately clear.
White’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
