Last night, Roger Stone, veteran strategist and confidante of President-elect Donald Trump, took part in a debate at Books & Books in Coral Gables with investigative journalist Gerald Posner over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

After the debate, I sat down with Stone in the bookstore’s courtyard and discussed two different aspects of the post 2016 election climate that we’re in right now. The first covered Hillary Clinton and challenges the Trump administration will face in its upcoming first term.

A big announcement this week came from a New York Times article reporting that Trump wasn’t pursuing an investigation into Hillary Clinton. During the campaign season, chants of “Lock her up” were constantly heard from the thousands of supporters in attendance.

Stone clarified and said that Trump “said it’s still on the table. This is not a matter for the President. This is a matter for the grand jury and the judicial process.”

He then explained that “when FBI Director Comey says there’s nothing in there, that’s not true. There’s evidence of corruption, treason, sexual exploitation. The American people need to know the truth. The great lesson of Watergate – we were told over and over again by the liberals was that no person was above the law. But why are Hillary and Bill and their greedy, criminal, nasty, foul mouthed, grabby little daughter Chelsea, who’s 30 years old and a co-conspirator in these crimes, why are they above the law?”

He also explained the challenges that the upcoming Trump administration would face in its first term by highlighting two that were very important and highly discussed throughout the campaign season.

The first comes from within the Republican party. He argues that “the biggest problem now in forming a government are the establishment Republican quislings, traitors, people who are “never Trump”, even worse, people who are supporters of Jeb Bush, who did not support him [Trump] in the general election nevermind for the nomination. And I’ve seen these kind of establishment types co-opt the administration of Ronald Reagan because I was a member of the Reagan transition in 80 and 84, and the idea of, for example, Mitt Romney, a man who called Trump a con-man, a man who called him a fraud, a man who was nasty and personal in his opposition. Now, if Mitt Romney doesn’t want to support Donald Trump, that’s fine. It’s America. You can say he’s unqualified. You can question his positions on the issues. But to call him a con-man, a fraud, that’s deeply personal. So, I would be very disappointed if Trump appoints Romney to any job but particularly Secretary of State because Romney is a Neocon.”

The second is our relationship with Russia. Stone assures that “Trump’s election in my opinion means that we have the possibility of peace with the Russians. Under the Obama/Clinton policies, we were hurdling towards war with the Russians. The reset was an abysmal failure, Joe Biden blurted out in public we were going to launch a cyber war on them to provoke them.”

One thing he assures that benefits a peaceful relationship with Russia is that “Trump favors détente with the Russians. He favors hard headed negotiations but to try to sit down if we can’t figure out a way to live and coexist as we did when Nixon made a deal with Brehznev for arms reduction.” And Stone also criticized that the political atmosphere has wrongfully made it possible for people to be antagonized “if you’re not for war with the Russians over Syria.” If so, “you must be a Russian agent, you must be on their payroll.”

When asked if he’d be taking on a position in the Trump administration, he admitted that he doesn’t want a government job. Instead, he’s been working on a book called “The Making of a President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated an American Revolution and Proved the Mainstream Media Wrong,” which will be released on Inauguration Day.

“This is gonna be a big picture look at the socio-economic and political trends that elected Trump, but it will also be an inside story of the intrigue and the back and forth in what has to be the weirdest, most unpredictable and viciously negative Presidential election in recent history.”