"If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so, Mueller said during his first press conference since submitting the report to Attorney General William Barr. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.
My fault for not including that paragraph. I was trying to save space on FR storage devices.
So you're saying that your headline should have been expanded to read:
Dershowitz took exception to Mueller having said that they would have said so if they had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime with this statement in his piece, Dershowitz: Shame on Robert Mueller for exceeding his role.
I think that your copy-editor might have come up with a clearer, more-concise, FR storage-device-saving headline, e.g.:
Dershowitz takes exception to Mueller's lying, weasely statement
That hits the nail on the head, doesn't it?
Regards,