In "Flight" could the early trouble with turbulence have led to the crash?

Just saw the movie.

Shortly after takeoff from Orlando, the aircraft faces two lines of heavy rainstorms and is inside the first. Whip doesn't do anything particularly unusual except for not climbing for a few seconds when most pilots would be trying to get over the disturbance as soon as possible. He spots a small weak slot in the storm on the plane's weather radar, turns 30° right for it and then resumes climbing. Other than misrepresenting the reason for temporarily leveling out to ATC, he doesn't actually do anything wrong. He does accelerate to the limit of maneuvering speed which bothers the copilot (as does almost everything Whip), but has a reasonable rationale for it. Why he doesn't continue to climb is a mystery, but I thought I caught some dialog suggesting he has deep knowledge about the structure of the formation. Such decisions are the pilot's prerogative.

The maneuvers in heavy weather certainly put more stress on the elevator (the movable horizontal portion of the tail) and could have caused even more stripping seen on the jack screw shown in the NTSB hearing, though that photo was taken more than a year before the accident and the jack screw was way overdue for replacement.

The precise failure was the jack screw jamming in a steep dive pitch position. The photo shows an already seriously deficient part which no sane mechanic would allow. It would not need to be further stressed for it to fail as portrayed. The rest of the damage logically follows: hydraulic failure from the jammed jack screw, inverted flight burning out the engines, etc.