Thing is, the law doesn't allow one class of persons to be held to a higher standard.
Everybody is supposed to be held to the same standard.
Of course, it seems in this situation that certain people in public service can exempt themselves from the common standard altogether with no punishment.
Misconduct in Public Office isn't used very often, but it exists and is there ebcause we do hold people in public office to a higher standard.
There's a bunch of stuff that you and I can do, but that we couldn't do if we were in public office.
I don't understand how a law that applies to a certain class of people, but not everybody, is not treating that certain class of people differently.
The law creates the higher standard. Behaviour that's perfectly legal for most people becomes illegal for people in public office because we expect higher standards from those people and we expect these higher standards so strongly we created a law to enforce it.