How not to get to the bottom of a political scandal

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 — took two hours today to try to smother the developing scandal in which his administration’s top aide ordered lane closings on the George Washington Bridge as political payback to a mayor who wouldn’t endorse him.

Three quotes from Christie’s news conference this morning betray his assertion that he’s going to get to the bottom of what happened.

This morning I’ve terminated the employment of Bridget Kelly, effective immediately. I’ve terminated her.

And he’s going to find out why she did what she did …

I’m going through an examination and talking to the individual people who work for me, not only to discover if there’s any other information that we need to find, but also to ask them: How did this happen?

… by not asking her “how did this happen?”

And so she was not given the opportunity to explain to me why she lied because it was so obvious that she had. And I’m, quite frankly, not interested in the explanation at the moment.

Meanwhile, it didn’t take the Taiwanese animators long …