Disclosures about how Kasim Reed governed emerged in public records obtained by the AJC and Channel 2 in 2018. Follow the reporting trail:

Text: ‘We can hold whatever we want’

During his eight years as mayor, Reed regularly polled residents and wore his popularity like a bullet-proof vest against criticism.

What the public didn’t know was how tightly his administration controlled the release of information in an attempt to quash negative stories before they could be published.

Ironically, that tendency opened the door to much of the damaging information that came to light in 2018.

Text messages obtained and published this year gave the public — and law enforcement — an unvarnished, behind-the-scenes view of Reed’s top spokespeople scheming to frustrate requests for public information.

Press secretary Jenna Garland instructed a Watershed spokeswoman in 2017 to “be as unhelpful as possible” and “drag this out as long as possible” before releasing embarrassing water bills that documented overdue accounts for Reed’s brother and several council members, including mayoral candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms.

Garland ended the conversation by instructing the spokeswoman to “provide the information in the most confusing format available.”

In March, five days after the text exchange was published in the AJC and aired on Channel 2, Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr’s office asked the GBI to launch the first-ever criminal probe into potential violations of the Georgia Open Records Act.

It was a development that helped prompt Mayor Bottoms, who had pledged a new era of transparency during her campaign, to adopt a sweeping ordinance that distanced the mayor’s office from overseeing public records requests.

Swept up in the GBI probe was a decision by Reed’s law department to hide legal invoices related to the federal corruption investigation in billing from unrelated cases.

The AJC requested the invoices in 2017. Reed’s law department responded by directing its outside counsel to create “composite” documents meant to mimic actual legal invoices but strip out the billing for the other matters. The city then passed off the documents as authentic invoices, in an apparent attempt to hide the co-mingled billing.

The AJC discovered the deception in February 2018, after noticing some of the invoice amounts did not match expenditures listed in a database of city spending.

Both of those stories became part of a 10-point complaint filed with the attorney general, alleging the Reed administration fostered “a culture of political interference” with open records requests dating back two years.

After the complaint was filed, the AJC learned of another text message exchange from 2017 that further bolstered the allegation.

In that instance, Reed’s communications director Anne Torres sought to improperly delay release of an employment contract for a newly hired cabinet official.

“We can hold whatever we want for as long as we want,” Torres wrote in the text.

Text messages between former Atlanta press secretary Jenna Garland and a Watershed manager in 2017, obtained by the AJC and Channel 2 in 2018, urged the manager to delay release of public records to Channel 2 Action News.