So, regardless of what you think of the case. Leaving out that somebody was already successfully convicted of this exact crime is a significant omission.
We do not know the charges yet of course. The most significant are likely to be campaign finance related with details of falsified records and hush money payments providing supporting evidence of those crimes as much as they are crimes themselves.
The fact that Cohen is a lawyer would seem to indicate that the case was solid enough that he was concerned he would lose on merit. However, a friend of mine who is managing partner in a legal firm says that "Once a trial goes to a jury, it's approximately a coin flip as to who will win, and the odds only go down from there." That's mainly because if the case is black-and-white, then there will be some settlement/plea deal prior to a trial.
However, Trump has put himself into a corner where he probably cannot accept any plea deal other than one that would drop the criminal charges but keep any misdemeanor charges. I'm not sure that the NY DA, Alvin Bragg, would be willing to do that unless the case starts falling apart. But in the case Trump will push for an aquial rather than a plea deal so that he can use it to rile up his base.
Misdemeanor charges are criminal charges.
CNN, at least, is reporting that he's facing 30 charges. If that's the case, it's probably charges related to the Trump Org's shenanigans that the corp was found guilty of. The organization's indictment had a lot of shady stuff and a lot of stuff that looked like flat out fraud. Lots of criminal looking behavior that plausibly can be directly tied to Trump himself.
Assuming the charges are limited to the Daniels payment, you're correct. It's a weak case. They have to prove the misdemeanor accounting charge, then to elevate to a felony, the DA must prove that crime was used to cover-up some other more serious crime (likely campaign finance related).
The last time a similar case was brought, it was against John Edwards (who took money to pay for housing for his mistress, or something like that). He was acquitted.
But, it appears the indictment has 34(?) charges. If they're counting each check to Cohen as a charge, that's 11(?), so there's something else there. Some of that could be conspiracy charges, but we don't know.
Say my firm's database gets ransomewared. If I pay the ransom directly, that may be a particular way of accounting. But say, I pay McCohen Computer Associates to fix the problem. Why do I not book it as a computer expense? I am not an accountant but am curious how this works.
The two-step payment through Cohen is only illegal if it's done to cover up other illegal activities or it's in violation of some other law.
In this case, it's likely the hush money was funneled through Cohen to keep it off the campaign books - that's what makes it illegal.