At a press conference in Washington this morning, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani denied any biological connection to the human-chiroptera hybrid known as Bat Boy. The Donald Trump advisor and candidate for secretary of state described allegations that he is Bat Boy’s missing father as “utterly groundless.”

“Bay Boy is not my son,” Giuliani told a throng of reporters and cryptozoologists. “I am a human being, like you, and I have engaged in sexual intercourse only with human women.”

A reporter who noted that Bat Boy’s mother is a human woman was not acknowledged. Instead, Giuliani addressed what he called a “conspiracy” to smear his reputation with paternity rumors, at a moment when he was poised to take a position in the cabinet of President-Elect Trump. He attributed the rumors to his longtime political enemies: Democrats, the ACLU, and unarmed black men. Giuliani stressed the importance of moving past issues like these in the coming weeks, both for America in general and for Bat Boy in particular.

“Bat Boy should stop trying to find out who his father is and focus on living his life,” he said. After pausing to lick his lips, he added that the half-human, half-bat child was “a good boy, [who should] keep moving forward [and] drinking blood.”

Giuliani admitted that, during his tenure as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he visited the high castle in the forests of Pennsylvania where Bat Boy is from. But he emphasized that he had no contact with any women while he was there, including the one-eyed gypsy who told People magazine she cursed Giuliani to “sow seeds but harvest only shadows.”

“I have never met Madam Zukov,” Giuliani said, “and none of her predictions have come true.” The 2016 GOP convention speaker briefly consulted a pocket mirror before adding, emphatically, “none.”

Giuliani then discussed plans for the first 100 days of the Trump administration, enumerating policies he might implement as head of the State Department. These included aggressive trade negotiations with China, a federal program to ensure that schoolchildren in remote areas were getting enough iron, and crackdowns on private ownership of tennis racquets and sacks. When asked if there was anything he wanted to say to Bat Boy, currently a third-year criminology major at Drexel, the normally strident Republican grew pensive.

“I would say that wherever your father is, Bat Boy, I’m sure he’s very proud,” Giuliani said. “None of this is your fault. He probably just got scared, because he was so young.”

Giuliani then left the podium in a flash of cameras, bumping into the wall and emitting a series of high-pitched shrieks on his way to a transition strategy meeting behind the White House bookcase.