Political circles in Washington are waiting for the other shoe to drop in a battle of rival memos regarding the FBI's investigation into the alleged Russian connections of key people in President Donald Trump's campaign team.
A 10-page memo written by Congressional Democrats, that counters a four-page memo written by Congressional Republicans on the FBI's conduct in investigating a foreign policy adviser on Mr Trump's campaign team, may be released soon.
Its release will pour gasoline on partisan fires. The battle will leave both parties badly bruised but is likely to be inconclusive. The real damage may be to the FBI.
A poll by the website Axios released last Saturday (Feb 3) found that just 38 per cent of Republicans viewed the FBI favourably, compared to 64 per cent of Democrats.
A separate HuffPost/YouGov poll released on Jan 31 also found confidence in the FBI had declined - though since 2015.
According to that survey, 51 per cent of the public said they had at least a fair amount of trust in the bureau, down 12 points from 2015, the Huffington Post reported.
Speaking on CNN on Tuesday evening (Wednesday morning, Singapore time), former vice-president Joe Biden said: "This is the first president to make a full-throated, unvarnished attack on the entirety of the FBI. This is to discredit the FBI, and discredit his own Justice Department... sowing doubt about whether or not our justice system is fair."
Mr Trump last May 2017 fired FBI director James Comey, calling him a showboat and grandstander, and saying the FBI had been "in turmoil''.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters "countless" FBI employees had lost faith in Mr Comey's leadership.
But anecdotes and internal emails reported in the media paint a different picture - of agents who largely respected Mr Comey and were taken aback when he was fired. Mr Thomas O'Connor, president of the FBI Agents Association, was quoted as saying Mr Comey's firing was a "gut punch".
This week, the online journal Lawfare reported that, under the Freedom of Information Act, it had obtained more than 100 pages of the FBI's leadership communications to staff dealing with the firing, and they contradicted the President's narrative.
The Republican memo released last Friday made the case that the FBI had obtained a court warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to tap a Trump campaign adviser without fully informing the court about the sourceof the information it was basing its case on - "opposition research" on Mr Trump paid for by the Democratic Party.
The memo covers only one aspect of the Russia investigation - the use of the Act. Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has insisted it has nothing to do with the Mueller investigation but about the FBI abusing power to spy on civilians. The subtext however, is that the FBI was biased against Mr Trump.
Mr Trump maintains that the Russia probe headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is a witch hunt - and in a Tweet claimed the memo vindicated him.
"It's hitting morale hard in the FBI," a private sector security analyst with wide contacts in the FBI told The Straits Times on condition of anonymity.
"I work with a lot of former bureau agents and analysts, and... it's painful to watch a top-notch investigative agency with a strong reputation for integrity being used as a political football," he said.
