I figured this out and thought I'd close it out in case someone else
runs into the same issue.
Mutt/openssl does not check the default certification path (on my arch
system it is /etc/ssl/certs) for trusted CA's. As soon as I put the server
certificates in /etc/ssl/certs.pem the connection went
I think I'm getting a bit closer on this but am now stuck again. It
looks to me like the server is not offering up the certificate for me to
accept. I exported the server certificate and the root CA certificate
and now have them in my openssl certs directory as well as a certificate
file in my mutt
