Washington ? Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, has apologized to his Senate colleagues for the “distraction” of his recent notoriety and has sent them a letter outlining his legal strategy for withdrawing a guilty plea in connection with a sex sting.

The letter went directly to fellow senators. It accompanied a copy of the motion that Craig filed Monday in Hennepin County, Minn., courts, seeking to undo his Aug. 1 guilty plea to a disorderly conduct misdemeanor. The three-term senator was arrested June 11 in the men’s room of the Minneapolis airport after an undercover police officer said the senator had signaled he was interested in sexual activity.

Craig’s spokesman, Dan Whiting, said he hadn’t seen the letter or the Roll Call article that first mentioned it, but he was aware of it. He described it Friday as merely a “simple cover letter” for the legal filings. It went out to his colleagues this week “so that senators, if they wanted, could read it without the media filter,” Whiting said in an e-mail.

The letter was sent because some fellow senators had contacted Craig’s office wanting more information about his legal case, said Judy Smith, a spokeswoman for Craig’s Washington criminal attorney, Billy Martin. Its purpose was to “just to keep them informed of the state of the legal issues,” Smith said.