Chicago ? Ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich says in a new book that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel wanted his help in arranging to leave the Obama administration after two years to reclaim his seat in Congress.

Blagojevich writes in “The Governor” that Emanuel spoke with him about whether it was possible to appoint a “placeholder” to the congressional seat Emanuel was giving up so that he could win back the seat in 2010 and continue his efforts to become speaker some day.

“As we have done for many months, we will continue to decline comment,” Emanuel spokeswoman Sarah Feinberg said in an e-mail Monday.

Blagojevich also admits that he wanted something in exchange for appointing President Barack Obama’s replacement in the Senate, but it wasn’t the deal described in federal corruption charges against him.

The Chicago Democrat says that the night before his arrest in December, he had launched a plan to appoint Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to the Senate seat because he hoped to cut a deal on pet projects with her father, powerful Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

That plan was ruined by his arrest. Blagojevich writes that he eventually appointed Roland Burris, in part because of Burris’ famously big ego. No one else but Burris would accept the appointment and fight to be seated under the circumstances, Blagojevich says.

Burris’ office declined to comment.

The ex-governor’s 264-page book, published by Phoenix, comes out Sept. 8. It offers a benign picture of events surrounding Blagojevich’s arrest in a corruption scandal that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said would make Abraham Lincoln “roll over in his grave.”

The scandal cost Blagojevich his job when lawmakers impeached and threw him out of office in January. The once-rising political star is scheduled to stand trial next year. Blagojevich, who has pleaded not guilty, repeatedly asserts his innocence in the book.

He says his discussions about Obama’s possible successors amounted to “ordinary and routine politicking.”

But federal authorities cast it in a much different light, alleging Blagojevich was caught on FBI wiretaps discussing what he could get in exchange for the seat, from jobs to campaign contributions.

Blagojevich says that story is “upside down” and that he never asked for, or raised the subject of, campaign contributions in exchange for the Senate seat.

Others approached his administration with offers of campaign money, he says in “The Governor” without naming names. “If anyone should have been charged with a crime for this, it should have been them and not me,” he writes.

When Blagojevich talked to Emanuel after the election about the Senate pick, Obama’s right-hand man “did not lobby for anyone in particular,” according to the book.

Blagojevich says Emanuel was interested in his own career because he had to give up his congressional seat to work in Obama’s White House. Blagojevich writes that Emanuel dreamed of being speaker of the U.S. House and wanted to know if Blagojevich would work with him to name a successor to “hold” his seat until he wanted it back.