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(CNN) The ex-wife of Labor Secretary nominee Andy Puzder is privately telling senators that she made a mistake decades ago in leveling domestic abuse charges against him and appearing in disguise on Oprah Winfrey's TV show to talk about her situation.

In a deeply personal and emotional letter to senators and obtained by CNN, Puzder's ex-wife Lisa Fierstein said she regrets the decisions she made decades ago as the two struggled with their marriage. She contended that she received bad advice from an attorney with a political "vendetta" when she pressed charges in the 1980s -- and that she was a guest on Winfrey's show in part because she wanted to go on a trip to Chicago.

"What we should have handled in a mature and private way became a contentious and ugly public divorce," Fierstein said to members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of her ex-husband, who heads the parent company of Hardee's and Carl's Jr.

She did not elaborate on why the attorney would have a vendetta against Puzder, nor did she identify the attorney.

Dan Sokol, an attorney who represented Fierstein at the time, told Time Magazine in December that the allegations that Puzder physically abused his then-wife were "credible and believable." He added that it was described to him as an "ongoing pattern with several episodes of physical violence."

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