If the Washington Post can be believed, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of purported collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has entered The Twilight Zone. According to the Post, Mueller is investigating Erik Prince, former Navy SEAL and founder of the private security firm Blackwater.

Based entirely on anonymous sources, the Post reports that in January 2017, nine days before Trump’s inauguration, Prince met with officials from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at a hotel in the Seychelles islands. While there Prince had a “backchannel” meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, a – wait for it – Russian.

Originally, the Post reported that the meeting had occurred in January 2016, i.e., eleven months before the election. Then it issued a correction: “This story has been updated to reflect that the meeting in the Seychelles took place in January 2017, not 2016.”

Oops. Since Prince’s meeting with the Russian took place after the election, it could not have been in furtherance of the self-levitating collusion conspiracy to influence the outcome of the election. If Prince met with the Russian on behalf of the Trump transition team, it would have been for the perfectly proper purpose of establishing a line of communications between the incoming administration and a foreign power.

So, what was the meeting about? On November 30, 2017, Prince testified voluntarily and without legal counsel before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Here’s a link to the transcript of his testimony.

Prince testified as follows:

“On January 11, 2017, I traveled to the Seychelles to meet some potential customers from the UAE for the logistics business of which I am chairman. After the meeting, they mentioned a guy I should meet who was also in town to see them, a Kirill Dmitriev from Russia, who ran some sort of hedge fund.

“I met him in the hotel bar, and we chatted on topics ranging from oil and commodity prices to how much his country wished for resumption of normal trade relations with the –relationship with the USA. I remember telling him that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Josef Stalin to defeat Nazi fascism, then certainly Donald Trump could work with Vladmir Putin to defeat Islamic fascism.

“The meeting ended after a maximum of 30 minutes. I’ve had no communications or dealings with him or any of his colleagues before or after that encounter last January.”

He made clear that he was not there representing anyone other than himself and his company. Then he added the following:

“Well, here’s what I don’t understand about why I’m here. If there’s all this rightful concern if there was actual collusion between the [Trump] campaign and the Russian government, this meeting didn’t happen until almost 2 months – more than 2 months after the election. So if there was collusion, why would there need to be any other followup meetings? [Emphasis added]”

During hours of close questioning by Rep. Adam Schiff (D.Cal.), Prince’s description of the meeting with the Russian never varied. He also stated his belief that the Post’s story about the meeting was the result of the Obama administration’s illegal unmasking of American citizens whose communications had been intercepted by FISA intercepts of foreign nationals.

Now the Post reports, “While Mueller is probing the circumstances of the Seychelles meeting, he is also more broadly examining apparent efforts by the Trump transition team to create a back channel for secret talks between the new administration and the Kremlin.”

According to the Post, “A witness [Lebanese-American businessman George Nader] cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the two countries, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.”

How can this be? Has Captain Bob gone completely around the bend? Is he trying to criminalize the use of back channels?

If so, did President Kennedy act illegally when, during the Cuban missile crisis, he communicated via back channels with the Kremlin to avert World War III? Did President Nixon break the law when he used back channels to negotiate his historic trip to China?

Is Mueller investigating the Seychelles meeting because it took place nine days before Trump’s inauguration? If so, are a president-elect and his incoming administration to remain hermetically sealed and cut off from the outside world until the moment the oath of office is administered? Are they prohibited by law from using back channel communications?

Or is the investigation of Prince aimed at creating another so-called process crime by which he will be charged with lying to the Intelligence Committee based on a contradictory version of events by George Nader? In this regard, it is worth noting that Rep. Schiff, the King of Leaks, did most of the questioning of Prince. His frustration with Prince’s answers comes through in the transcript of testimony. So, did Schiff use a back channel to Mueller to jam up Prince?

The bottom line is this: If Mueller has been reduced to chasing after Prince’s post-election meeting with a – gasp – Russian in the Seychelles, pre-election collusion leads must be drying up and things must be getting desperate. Now that the Republican majority on the Intelligence Committee has found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, is Mueller’s investigation of Prince’s post-election Seychelles meeting a sign that his team of Hillary Clinton supporters have run out the string on campaign collusion? If so, isn’t it time to wrap up their investigation?