The Congressional reports have no ability to prosecute and may refer any alleged crimes they discover to the USDOJ at their own discretion. The attorneys have discretion to pick and choose cases they want to prosecute where federal laws have been broken, which is usually a calculation of whether they will win, how much the case will cost to prosecute, what the evidence looks like, if the case is “serious” enough, and other discretionary factors. These allegations are rather common and low on the list or offenses they go after with their limited resources. Since resources are so limited, they actually prosecute few crimes, and the ones they are do need to be winnable to enhance their career and stature. Is it fair? No. But the strings of the purse powerfully constrain the attorneys and their decisions and that they pursue big cases to enhance their careers only makes sense to them.
In the sum total, his case is about sleeping with some girls, possessing drugs, fairly low level offenses that ordinarily can put a poor black man in jail for years but won’t get any rich white man of prominence arrest for ever, since their high priced lawyers can beat the charges. This modern system was designed only after the last of the four civil rights bills were signed in 1965, making merijuania into an illicit first class drug or equal stature as heroine and cocaine. While the “crack era” is associated with mass incarceration of blacks and swat team raids into black homes, and rightly so, most charges were for pot which was wide spread, and simple non-violent possession. In most all places, despite higher possession, usage, and dealing by whites in middle and upper classes, arrests of them were few in comparison. The goal was to form a new system of mass voting rights repression, which worked. They sold everyone on the crack epidemic but really it was a bait and switch and in some places 1 in 4 black men of voting age were stripped of their voting rights.
So really there is no long history on this type of prosecution in Florida of minor drug possession and prostitution for rich white or upper class white men. For black men, especially in the lower class, the history starts really in full after civil rights as a replacement for ways to disenfranchise. Now the only way most blacks and poor Latinos get their voting rights back in Florida is by a pardon from the Governor, and good luck with that. For Gaetz, that wouldn’t be a problem though. The one percent of pardons to restore voting rights in Florida in the 2000s have been to white, white-collar “criminals” with connections. No surprise there. This is the best outcome you will get for him. Be satisfied he lost his job.