DETROIT — Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick of Detroit is facing increased political pressures after documents from a lawsuit settlement he reached with former police officers were made public last week by a court order.

Kilpatrick, who recently was the keynote speaker at the Martin Luther King Prayer Breakfast at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, N.C., is under investigation for allegedly lying under oath about his sexual involvement with his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty.

The documents that were released to the public recently show that Kilpatrick agreed to pay $8.4 million in taxpayers’ money to settle claims by three former officers who claimed they had been wrongly fired, in exchange for those officers’ vowing never to reveal explicit text messages between Kilpatrick and Beatty.

Those messages were publicized on Jan. 23 by The Detroit Free Press. Many of them were sexually explicit, seemingly contradicting Kilpatrick’s testimony under oath during the lawsuit that he and Beatty were not lovers.

That testimony is now the subject of a perjury investigation being conducted by county prosecutor Kym L. Worthy.

Furthermore, the officers in the suit have said that they were fired in part to block an investigation that could have led to the affair being brought to light.

Meanwhile, Kilpatrick made a public appearance on television on Jan. 30, in which he stood beside his wife and apologized for nonspecific misconduct.

He also has accused the Free Press of wrongdoing and questioned how it got copies of the text messages from 2002 and 2003.

If Kilpatrick is charged and convicted of lying under oath, he could face up to 15 years in prison.