After weeks of Twitter users demanding Congress #ReleaseTheMemo, the House Intelligence Committee—chaired by Republican Devin Nunes— disclosed the contentious four-page report to the public Friday, after President Donald Trump signed off on its release. And while, as expected, the document alleges that federal law enforcement officials abused their surveillance powers in investigating the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, national security experts see something very different. In fact, they see almost nothing at all—or at least not enough to make any definitive judgement calls.

As had been rumored, the memo details supposedly improper actions by law enforcement officials in seeking a warrant to wiretap Carter Page, one of Trump's campaign advisors. But understanding what the memo says—and, critically, doesn't say—requires familiarity with the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which governs requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, better known as FISA. Those who know the law best say the memo is largely bunk.

“We don't know anything more than we knew before. Certainly we don't have evidence of a scandal," says Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security program at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice. "If there's a scandal here it's the fact that this has been built up in a way that will allow Trump to try to discredit the Mueller investigation."

Between the Lines

What no one disputes: In October 2016—several weeks after he had left the Trump campaign and months after the Russian investigation had begun—the Department of Justice obtained a warrant to surveil Page. It did so under Title 1 of FISA, nicknamed "traditional FISA," which requires law enforcement demonstrate probable cause to a judge on the FISC court that a potential target is an agent of a foreign power.

That means the government had to show Page was acting as an operative for Russia. That would have required an extensive application, which would have been reviewed by a number of Department of Justice lawyers in the National Security Division. Here's where the memo comes in.

'The dossier and Steele and all that—it’s cherrypicking a piece of what was probably a 50, or 60, or 100 page application.' William C. Banks, Syracuse University College of Law

Nunes alleges the Page application leaned on information gleaned not directly from the FBI, but from a dossier written by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Yes, that dossier, made public last year and subsequently revealed to be financed in part by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

This is the controversy: Purportedly unverified research, funded by Democrats, led to the surveillance of an advisor to a Republican presidential candidate. Nunes alleges that the FBI and the Department of Justice did not tell the FISA judge who approved the warrant that the information may have come from a biased source, despite having numerous opportunities to do so.

But the memo also doesn't say several things. It doesn't accuse anyone at the Department of Justice or the FBI of violating the law. It doesn't claim that the entire dossier is false—just that the FISA warrant application to surveil Carter Page relied on portions of it. And most importantly, the memo doesn't say whether law enforcement corroborated the Steele dossier claims that appeared in that warrant.

In fact, those who follow FISA law closely say that even if the Steele dossier was considered as part of the application, there's no way that it was the only intel. Because FISA warrants are confidential, no one knows what other information was included. But FISA warrant applications require incredible rigor and thorough documentation. The Nunes memo itself acknowledges that the Steele dossier formed only a "part" of the application.

"The dossier and Steele and all that—it’s cherrypicking a piece of what was probably a 50, or 60, or 100 page application,” says William C. Banks, founder of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University College of Law.

FISA applications also have to go through an in-depth protocol known as the "Woods Procedure," during which the intelligence community needs to verify every single fact. For example, if the application says a person was on a specific train at a specific time, the agent would need to show Department of Justice lawyers how they found out that information. There are other oversight mechanisms as well. For example, applications need to be first certified by the Director or Deputy Director of the FBI, as well as the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, or Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division. In other words, FISA warrants are reviewed at the highest levels, which is part of the reason Nunes' allegations are so explosive—they implicate multiple parties at the very top of the US intelligence apparatus.