Christie was duped? Not buying. There was a dead rat, and Christie pretended that somebody farted.
I do believe Christie may have been mislead by his aides but only because he was deliberately not asking the right questions. Otherwise known as "plausible deniability." Except that it is not plausible, because Christie has to be the ONLY person in all of NJ and NYC who professes to believe that there EVER was a "traffic study." If he has no idea what a traffic study is (as he has said), fine, I can understand that, but the point is, he did not bother to ask anyone in his administration who MIGHT know the simple question, "Does a traffic study make sense at this time and at this place and in this way?" Or "can I get a copy of this traffic study?" Presumably Christie can read. Genuine traffic studies likely have titles, dates, needs statements, method statements, etc. The answer to those simple questions could have cleared up a lot of questions for Christie and made it less likely for him to be duped, if that was his intention. There is zero evidence that he did this. Of course if he had he would no longer have plausible deniability. No, there was a dead rat, and Christie pretended that somebody had farted.
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It is unlikely there is any paper trail. Christie likely said something to the effect of: "This guy is starting to piss me off. Why should we have to put up with this?" And everyone in the room understands that the order has been given. And that is why Christie was so pissed off - not that the action was taken - that was just lip service for the press - but that he was lied to - yes, he was. The aides assured him in December that there was no paper trail and there was. Christie made it clear that the lying was the firing offense - not the retaliation. I actually think that was a mistake and he is going to come to regret that moment of actual candor - probably the only actual truth (other then the Freudian and mawkish "I am a sad, sad man"
he told the entire time.
edit: Note: I understand your question, "why this kind of puzzle post?" The reason is - A significant number of people will buy Christie's performance and his denials. On the surface, it was convincing. He does "poor poor pitiful me" well. And the media got bored and asked only softball questions until they had no more. But he doth protest too much. That is my point.
