Perhaps it depends on what one means by "things".
They were floating conflicting stories about the Daniels payment even before the Cohen arbitration. Again, the payment was well known, and the conflicting stories were well known, when Common Cause filed the January 22 complaints: https://www.commoncause.org/media/feccomplaintstormydaniels/
As late as January 30, in view of Cohen's threat to enforce the agreement, Daniels had signed the denial.
I doubt the Daniels civil suit had any impact on the timing or substance of the 9 April Cohen warrant, issued pursuant to a months-long investigation. So that would have happened when it happened anyway. The pending indictment is a matter of waiting for the special master to do a first sort through the evidence, so that the investigative team can frame the counts.
What really precipitated this thread in the twisted skein of events was the 2011 InTouch interview. The scotched interview had resurfaced as early as October 2016, which was why there was renewed interest in getting Daniels into a hush agreement in the first place. The only problem was that enough people were aware of the contents of the 2011 InTouch interview, so that when reporters attempted to follow up on that by contacting Daniels, it became apparent that there was a reason she wasn't talking about it. At that time, the picture of the two of them at the Tahoe event was a "thing" primarily because the friend of Daniels whom they invited to the hotel room was telling at least her story of, yes, the two of them were in the room and inviting her up.
But the wheels were in motion even during the period of time that Daniels was still refusing to talk about it, and I don't see how the pace of events in the SDNY would have been any different. It's not as if, beyond having received the payment, Daniels would have had any idea of how the money got to Davidson's IOLTA account, who sent it, or who paid who for having sent it.
I believe we'll know a LOT more when the Cohen indictment is drafted, but the other hold up on that would be if Cohen is already or begins to cooperate.
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