Uh-oh.

So intent is the liberal media on its latest “get Trump” operation — this one involving a phone call from the president to his Ukrainian counterpart that, according to an unidentified so-called “whistleblower,” allegedly touched on corruption involving ex-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, they neglected a key result.

That result would be that in targeting Trump on Ukraine the spotlight has abruptly brought attention to … the conduct of the ex-VP himself. Just as his campaign for the Democratic nomination enters its critical phase.

The facts that have been uncovered in this alleged Biden influence-peddling scheme run like this.

The son of the sitting vice president of the United States hops aboard Air Force Two for Dad’s trip to China. Vice President Joe Biden is the point person for the Obama administration’s Asia strategy, and he is headed to Beijing for talks with the Chinese leadership. Son Hunter is a co-founder of an investment firm called Rosemont Seneca Partners, set up in 2009 — the year Joe Biden became vice president. His partner in this venture is Chris Heinz, the stepson of Sen. John Kerry, the latter of whom will become Obama’s second-term secretary of state. In 2009, Kerry is the chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee.

Let’s pick up the story as unearthed by Peter Schweizer, author of Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends. Schweizer had an excerpt of his book published as a column in the New York Post in March 2018 — over a year and a half ago. The headline:

Inside the shady private equity firm run by Kerry and Biden’s kids.

The excerpt from Schweizer’s book says, in part, this:

For Hunter Biden, the trip (his father’s China trip) coincided with a major deal that Rosemont Seneca was striking with the state-owned Bank of China. From his perspective, the timing couldn’t have been better.

Vice President Biden, Hunter Biden and Finnegan (Hunter Biden’s daughter) arrived to a red carpet and a delegation of Chinese officials. Greeted by Chinese children carrying flowers, the delegation was then whisked to a meeting with Vice President Li Yuanchao and talks with President Xi Jinping….

Rosemont Seneca Partners had been negotiating an exclusive deal with Chinese officials, which they signed approximately 10 days after Hunter visited China with his father. The most powerful financial institution in China, the government’s Bank of China, was setting up a joint venture with Rosemont Seneca….

Rosemont Seneca and the Bank of China created a $1 billion investment fund …

In short, the Chinese government was literally funding a business that it co-owned along with the sons of two of America’s most powerful decision makers.

Got that? Joe Biden put his influence-peddling son on Air Force Two for a key trip to China, and the son, as part of the delegation, is on arrival “whisked to a meeting with Vice President Li Yuanchao and talks with President Xi Jinping.” And 10 days later — presto! There is a “$1 billion investment” deal with Hunter Biden’s firm and the Bank of China.

Recall again that this excerpt from Schweizer’s book appeared in March 2018 — over a year and a half ago. Where was the outrage in the media? Zip. Where is New York’s Congressman Jerry Nadler, the head of the House Judiciary Committee, when it comes to investigating the former vice president? Nowhere to be seen.

The China-Biden gambit is, of course, separate and apart from Biden’s threat to a different country altogether — Ukraine. Except it isn’t. As the Hill’s John Solomon reported way back in April:

In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.

“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.

Then Solomon, famous for overturning rocks and digging for detail, writes,

But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.

Solomon adds,

The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe — shared with me by senior Ukrainian officials — shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.

Shokin told me in written answers to questions that, before he was fired as general prosecutor, he had made “specific plans” for the investigation that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”

What do we have here?

What we have is a pattern of corruption from the then-sitting vice president of the United States. In Ukraine, Biden leveraged taxpayer dollars to fire the prosecutor who was investigating his son. In China, Biden made his son ostentatiously part of a delegation to China that had Biden meeting with the president and vice president of China. Ten days later, Hunter Biden’s company got a $1 billion private equity deal from the Bank of China.

So, the obvious question: Where are the congressional investigations into this corruption? Where is the Department of Justice? Where is the mainstream media? Are Democrats really going to nominate Biden for president?

The humor here, such as it is, is that all of this is now getting attention because the media is trying — in its latest “get Trump” effort — to target the president for supposedly asking the president of the Ukraine to do an investigation into Hunter Biden.

In reality, the media’s attention to this story has turned into a political heat-seeking missile that has boomeranged and exploded on — Joe Biden.

The irony doesn’t get any thicker than that.