Another player in the drama has appeared on the scene, and his presence in the ensemble is another measure of how widely Robert Mueller is spreading his nets to trawl through the muck and slime that composes the business empire of the current President* of the United States. From CNN:

George Nader, a low-profile diplomatic go-between who has forged close ties to the Emirates, was stopped and questioned by the FBI at Dulles International Airport in January as he returned from an overseas trip, these sources say. Since then, he has been talking to Mueller's investigators and providing information to the grand jury.

Nader attended a December 2016 meeting in New York between Emirati officials and members of Trump's inner circle, and another in January 2017 in the Seychelles islands between the Emiratis and Erik Prince, a Trump associate. Nader was also in the Seychelles when Prince met with a Russian banker, the sources said.

Ah, we’re back in the Seychelles again with Erik Prince, mercenary, money-grubber, and brother of the current Secretary of Education. This episode had faded from my mind until the news about Mueller’s interviews with Nader brought things back around to it again.

Erik Prince Getty Images

Here, from The Intercept, is a reminder of what that was all about.

The Washington Post reported in April that the FBI was looking into the Seychelles meeting as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Prince is scheduled to testify on November 30 before the House Intelligence Committee as part of its Russia investigation. During the same period in January when Dmitriev and Prince were in the Seychelles, Alexander Mashkevich, a Kazakh businessman linked to a shady Trump investment vehicle known as Bayrock, also arrived to meet with Zayed, who was “holding court” at his mansion on the island, a source familiar with the meetings said. Abdulrahman Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi billionaire whose grandfather founded the first Saudi private bank and whose father allegedly helped Al Qaeda, was also present. The meetings came several weeks after Zayed flew to New York to meet with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, and Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who is now a subject in the federal Russia probe.

Once more, it’s clear that the working assumption of the Mueller investigation is that the entire Trump presidency*, and the Trump campaign that preceded it, is a vast corrupt empire, and that the roots of that empire are to be found in the Trump Organization, which was a slightly less vast, but no less corrupt, empire built on deceit and incompetence, bailed out by its lawyers.

To understand the corruption of the administration*, Mueller is teaching the nation, you have to understand the corruption of the businesses. And to understand the corruption of the businesses, you have to understand the ability of the man to corrupt everything and everyone he touches.

This, of course, includes the country that elected him. Mueller is teaching an awful lesson, but one that is no less important for the view it gives us of our republic and ourselves.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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