Rachel Maddow Has an Alternate Theory of Christie’s “Bridgegate” Scandal

Rachel Maddow has a humdinger of a conspiracy theory about what really caused Chris Christie’s “Bridgegate” scandal:

Huffington Post sums up Maddow, who suggests that the traffic shutdown may have been payback against Democrats who were blocking Christie’s nominations to the New Jersey Supreme Court.

By last August, Supreme Court Justice Helen Hoens, a Republican, was up for renomination. When state Senate Democrats signaled they would challenge Christie’s nomination, the governor said he wouldn’t renominate Hoens.

“I simply could not be party to the destruction of Helen Hoens’s professional reputation,” Christie said during an August press conference. “I was not going to let her loose to the animals.”

As Maddow pointed out, the press conference was the evening before Christie’s deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, sent an email requesting “traffic problems in Fort Lee” to David Wildstein, one of Christie’s top aides at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the bridge.

What’s more, Fort Lee is represented by Sen. Loretta Weinberg, the state Senate Democratic leader.

“Roughly 12 hours after Gov. Christie blows up at the Senate Democrats and torpedoes the career of a Supreme Court justice who he likes … the leader of those ‘animals’ in the Senate sees her district get the order of destruction from Gov. Christie’s deputy chief of staff,” Maddow concluded.

If this theory pans out, does it make Bridgegate worse? Or is it already bad enough for Christie?