I'm following the Chris Christie story with some interest but not following it relentlessly due to a lack of time.
As Josh Marshall notes here, something doesn't make sense, mainly the motive. Governor Christie did seem rather convincing in his year-long press conference arguing that he hadn't sought the endorsement of the Mayor of Fort Lee so it made no sense that anyone would take revenge on him by closing down that bridge. Let me just toss out one thought here that I haven't seen anyone considering…
Back in the Nixon Days, one "scandal" that never happened was this: Several administration officials were furious with reporter Jack Anderson for some things he'd printed and one day, a senior Nixon aide — most accounts say it was Charles Colson — remarked aloud that it was imperative that someone "stop Anderson at all costs." Or perhaps the phrasing was a bit different. Whatever it was, it eventually caused special operative G. Gordon Liddy to believe he had been assigned to murder Anderson.
The details of who said what and how serious they were about this have been recounted many ways. Some say Liddy took some hyperbole too seriously but that before he could act, the misunderstanding was cleared up. Others say there was an actual decision to have the White House kill a reporter…and then they realized how much trouble that could cause. I dunno which it was but it is at least possible that it was all a misinterpretation or someone's overreaction.
Is it possible that's what happened with the George Washington Bridge incident? Maybe Christie, angry at New Jersey Democrats or someone in Fort Lee, said, "We've got to cause some trouble for those people" and his underlings took that a directive to do what they did.
This is speculation, of course, but I've always thought people were missing the most likely scenario when they asked, "Did Richard Nixon order the Watergate break-in?" It's always seemed more likely to me that Nixon ordered that kind of thing be done and didn't get into specifics. If people keep asking, "Did Chris Christie order the lane closures on the bridge?", they might miss the most likely answer in that matter. I'd be more interested if the folks who gave the order to snarl traffic thought they were ordered by Christie to do that kind of thing, if not that action in particular.