Several readers have written in this week saying they’re having a hard time squaring The Times’s own past reports of wiretapping with the paper’s assertions that there is no firm evidence that any warrants for wiretaps have been issued. Readers also expressed confusion with The Times’s assertion that it would be illegal for a White House to receive information about such investigations, when its own wiretapping story in January said the Trump White House was given some information from intercepted communications.

“For months now the NY Times and many other mainstream news sources has been running stories based on anonymous leaks saying that a massive investigation was going on into Trump and company’s Russian dealings based on wiretaps and intel intercepts,” wrote John Penley of Asheville, N.C. “Now Obama officials are saying this all never happened so my question is this: Why have the NY Times and others been saying it has for months now basing their stories on anonymous leaks?”

I reached out to editors in the Washington bureau to seek their help in clarifying the difference between Clapper’s — and The Times’s — assertions that no warrants had been issued, and the reference to wiretapping in the January story.

Elisabeth Bumiller, the bureau chief, said the January story was referring to information picked up from wiretaps and other intelligence collected overseas, a process that requires no warrants.

There’s a lot to parse. And doing so, in a way that is clear to readers, is not easy when the subject matter is complicated and the information that reporters receive comes under strict terms of how it can be used. One reporter, Charlie Savage, produced a helpful Q. and A. explaining the law around wiretaps and key terms. But it didn’t try to show how Trump’s claims line up against The Times’s past reporting.

Hoping to take advantage of the circumstances, not only the White House but several conservative media outlets are now trying to assert that The Times’s reporting is proof that Trump is right in his claims. That is a bold exaggeration, but it is made more possible by a shortage of clear and complete information on The Times’s part. Better if The Times helps readers understand this crucial story than let others, with flagrant political motives, do so.