HONOLULU — In the days after Barack Obama's election as president, Rahm Emanuel, a top adviser, suggested to Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois that Obama's Senate seat should be filled by Valerie Jarrett, a close confidante to Obama.

In that same week, Jarrett spoke with a labor union official in Illinois who said he had talked to the governor about the possibility of appointing her to the seat. During that conversation, the union leader mentioned that Blagojevich had his eye on a possible Cabinet position in the Obama administration.

The contact was among the findings of an internal report released Tuesday, compiled by lawyers for the president-elect. The report concluded that Emanuel had as many as six conversations with the governor's office about the Senate vacancy, but that Obama had none, and that neither Emanuel, Jarrett nor any other Obama associates had any talks about a deal in which Blagojevich would benefit from appointing someone to the Senate seat.

Blagojevich was charged by federal prosecutors in Chicago this month on a variety of corruption counts, including an alleged effort to trade the appointment to the Senate seat for a job or money.

The report also disclosed that Obama, Emanuel and Jarrett were questioned by federal prosecutors last week in the corruption inquiry of the governor. Obama was not under oath or considered more than a witness in the case, aides said.

Obama did not speak about the matter on Tuesday. He continued his vacation in Hawaii, where he attended a memorial service for his grandmother, who died just before the election.

Jarrett, who will serve as a senior adviser in the White House, had no communication with Blagojevich or his aides, the report said. But the report said that three days after the election, she spoke with Tom Balanoff, president of the Illinois chapter of the Service Employees International Union, about the Senate seat and the governor's ambitions to serve in the Obama administration as secretary of health and human services.

This conversation could be of interest in the criminal case against Blagojevich, who was recorded on the same day as the Jarrett-Balanoff meeting in wiretapped phone calls expressing an interest in a job with an arm of the union in exchange for a possible Senate appointment.

According to an affidavit, Blagojevich was also captured on tape that day telling an unnamed adviser that he was willing to "trade" the appointment for the Cabinet post.

"Ms. Jarrett did not understand the conversation to suggest that the governor wanted the Cabinet seat as a quid pro quo for selecting any specific candidate to be the president-elect's replacement," Greg Craig, who has been designated by Obama as his White House counsel, wrote in the report. "At no time did Balanoff say anything to her about offering Blagojevich a union position."

In the conversations with Blagojevich immediately after the election, Emanuel recommended Jarrett for the Senate seat, the report said, a position that later turned out to be contrary to Obama's wishes. Obama "had ruled out communicating a preference for any one candidate," the report said.

Emanuel was not available to answer a reporter's questions on Tuesday, because he had left for a holiday trip to Africa, aides said.

The report suggested that Obama had been more involved in thinking about his Senate successor than his public statements had indicated.

The report said that after Jarrett took herself out of the running for the Senate seat, Obama authorized Emanuel to pass on the names of four people he considered highly qualified to take over his seat: Illinois comptroller Daniel W. Hynes; Tammy Duckworth, the state veterans affairs director; and U.S. Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Chicago Democrats.

Obama later offered two other names, the report said: Attorney General Lisa Madigan of Illinois and the Chicago Urban League president, Cheryle R. Jackson.

Those names were passed along by Emanuel in a series of four calls to John Harris, the governor's chief of staff, from early November through Dec. 8, one day before Blagojevich and Harris were arrested.

Emanuel's contact with the governor was "totally appropriate," Craig told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.

The only other name mentioned in the report was Dr. Eric Whitaker, a close friend of Obama's, who was approached by a Blagojevich aide immediately after the election. The aide, the report said, "wanted to know who, if anyone, had the authority to speak for the president-elect."

"The president-elect told Dr. Whitaker that no one was authorized to speak for him on the matter," the report said. "The president-elect said that he had no interest in dictating the result of the selection process … ."