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Case 18-2868, Document 279, 08/09/2019, 2628231, Page28 of 37 Id. at 19. However, the court recognized that “extending privileged status to communication made prior to anticipated litigation has the potential to be abused”; extending an absolute privilege to this context, the court said, “would be problematic and unnecessary.” Id. The court held it would recognize only a qualified privilege for pre-litigation communications. Jd. Crucially to the case at bar, the court held that the traditional privilege- rebuttal malice was inapplicable to the pre-litigation privilege: Rather than applying the general malice standard to this pre-litigation stage, the privilege should only be applied to statements pertinent to a good faith anticipated litigation. This requirement ensures that privilege does not protect attorneys who are seeking to bully, harass, or intimidate their client’s adversaries by threatening baseless litigation or by asserting wholly unmeritorious claims, unsupported in law and fact, in violation of counsel’s ethical obligations. Therefore, we hold that statements made prior to the commencement of an anticipated litigation are privileged, and that the privilege is lost where a defendant proves that the statements were not pertinent to a good faith anticipated litigation. Id. (emphasis supplied). Accordingly, the only question is whether the January 2015 statement Mr. Barden caused to be issued to the six to thirty journalists was “pertinent to a good faith anticipated litigation.” The undisputed evidence establishes that the answer is yes. Mr. Barden anticipated litigation. '7 9918 He “fully complied with [his] ethical obligation as a lawyer.”’” He was hardly “bully[ing], harass[ing], or intimidat[ing]” the six to thirty journalists, since he caused a press agent, Mr. "See Doc.542-7, Ex.K J 28 (“At the time I directed the issuance of the statement, I was contemplating litigation against the press-recipients . . . .”); id. | 17 (statement was intended as “‘a shot across the bow’”; “the statement was very much intended as a cease and desist letter to the media-recipients, letting [them] understand the seriousness with which Ms. Maxwell considered the publication of plaintiff's obviously false allegations and the legal indefensibility of their own conduct”); Doc.542-6, Ex.F (“Maxwell . . . reserves her right to seek redress’’). '8D)0c.542-7, Ex.K J 26. 23