A Combs trial glossary: ex-PA tells jury what 'SEAL Team Six' and 'Gucci bag active' mean in Diddy-speak
"Zans," "Gucci bag active," and "SEAL Team Six" — ex-PA Brendan Paul was tasked with explaining all these Combsworld slang terms and more.
Paul's testimony was tactically important. Prosecutors used his descriptions of drugs, sex, and grueling work schedules to bolster the narcotics-distribution, sex-trafficking, and forced-labor allegations of a racketeering charge that carries a potential life sentence.
The testimony also offers a primer in deciphering Diddy. Here are some insider references the PA translated for jurors:
1. Gucci-bag active
Paul, who worked as Combs' gofer from 2022 into 2024, once texted Kristina Khorram, chief of staff at the mogul's music and lifestyle empire, to let her know that their boss was up and at 'em.
"PD active now," he texted.
"Like, wild king mode active?" Khorram responded, according to the February 2024 text chain shown to jurors on Friday. "Or Gucci bag active?"
"In between the two, if that makes sense LOL," Paul answered.
Paul explained from the witness stand that Khorram was asking if Combs was busy preparing for the evening's "wild king night" (see below) or if he had also been dipping into a certain pouch-sized, black leather Gucci bag.
Asking if Combs was "Gucci bag active" was Khorram's way of finding out, "Is he partying? Is he getting high?" Paul told the jury.
Multiple PAs have testified that the Gucci bag was always stocked with drugs and went with Combs wherever he traveled.
The bag, now known as Government Exhibit 10A-103-M1, contained an assortment of cocaine, ketamine, methamphetamine, and Xanax when federal agents seized it from Combs' Miami home in March 2024. It also had three orange pills stamped with the word "Tesla" that tested positive for ecstasy.
2. Wild king nights
Combs is accused of sex trafficking two girlfriends, R&B artist Cassie Ventura and "Jane Doe," by forcing them to have sex with male escorts as he watched, masturbated, and recorded them.
Jurors have previously heard that between 2008 and 2018, Combs and Ventura used the term "freak offs" to describe these drug-fueled, dayslong performances at the center of the sex-trafficking case. By the time Combs began dating the second accuser, "Jane," in 2021, they were called "hotel nights," at least for a while, prosecutors said.
On the stand on Friday, Paul provided a clue as to when — and why — the name changed from "hotel nights" to "wild king nights."
"After Cassie's lawsuit, they stopped being in hotels," Paul said, referring to Ventura's highly publicized November 2023 suit, which accused Combs of beating her and forcing her to have sex with male escorts in luxury hotels across the country.
Combs settled Ventura's lawsuit for $20 million the day after it was filed, but it still had grave consequences, sparking a barrage of similar sex-assault suits and the federal investigation leading to his indictment.
3. Zans
"You get me zans," Combs once asked Paul in a punctuation-free Valentine's Day 2024 text shown to the eight-man, four-woman jury Friday. "Still working on it," Paul responded.
"Xanax," Paul explained when lead prosecutor Maurene Comey asked him to define "zans."
Prosecutors will likely argue that the text is significant because it shows Combs personally asking Paul, an employee of what the indictment calls the "Combs criminal enterprise," to purchase illegal drugs.
Paul said he bought drugs for Combs on between five and 10 occasions during his 18-month stint as personal assistant.
He also told jurors his job ended in March of 2024, when federal agents executed a search warrant on Combs' plane at a Miami airport. Paul said he was arrested for possessing seven tenths of a gram of his boss's cocaine. The charge was eventually dismissed.
4. Flower, tree, and Sunset Sherbet
On cross-examination, defense lawyer Brian Steel asked if the amount of drugs Paul purchased for Combs appeared to suggest mere "personal use." Paul agreed, answering that it represented "what I would consider personal use."
Still, the cost could pile up. Paul was asked about a February 9, 2024, text in which he complained that the company owed him nearly $5,000 for drug outlays he'd made on Combs' behalf.
In the text, Paul told Khorram and a Combs Global finance exec that he'd been waiting months to be paid back for $4,200 he'd spent on "flower" — meaning marijuana, the ex-PA explained.
"King Louie and Sunset Sherbet," Paul told the jury when asked what Combs' favorite strains of weed were. (One of his first jobs as PA, he testified, was "packing joints.")
According to the same 2024 text, Combs also owed Paul $780 for "Gucci items." Asked what that term meant, Paul answered, "hard drugs."
5. Tusi
Paul told the jury he had worked for Combs for only a few weeks when he found a vial of bright pink powder and a bag of blue pills left out on Combs' desk in his Los Angeles mansion.
Paul said he texted a photo of the two items to his fellow personal assistants, asking what he should do.
On Friday, he was asked about the photo. "I took it," he confirmed. He said he tucked the items out of sight and later learned the pink powder was called "tusi" or "2C."
Tusi is a mix of the powdered horse tranquilizer ketamine and ecstasy, "dyed pink for the aesthetic," Paul told the jury.
Combs once asked him to sample some pink powder, "to see if it was any good," Paul testified. "Euphoric," he said when the prosecutor asked how he felt afterward.
He didn't want to try the drug, but did so anyway. "I wanted to prove my loyalty," he told the jury. He was 23 years old at the time.
6. K-pop
Asked what drugs he purchased for Combs over his 18 months working for him, Paul rattled off a lengthy list.
It included marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine, and tusi.
It also included something he called "K-pop." Here again, prosecutors assumed the jury needed a vocabulary lesson.
When Comey asked the former PA to tell jurors what K-pop is, Paul answered, "It's Ketamine in lollipop form."
7. Guido, One Stop, Baby Girl, and Ovi
Paul rattled off another lengthy list when asked who he knew to be selling drugs to Combs.
The list included "Baby Girl," "Ovi," and a double-chinned man (based on his photo in evidence) named "Guido," whom Paul described as "the drug dealer in Los Angeles."
Also included was an aptly named fellow called "One Stop," a name that reflected the broad variety of drugs he sold, Danity Kane singer Dawn Richard explained in testimony last month.
"Cocaine, Plan B, birth control, weed, E, molly, like, everything," Richard told the jury of One Stop's wares.
8. SEAL Team Six
In Combs' lexicon, SEAL Team Six, the covert and loyal Navy unit that killed Osama bin Laden, is the model for an ideal workforce.
"What was Mr. Combs' expectation of his assistants?" Comey asked Paul.
"He used to say that he wants us to move like SEAL Team Six," Paul answered.
"What was your understanding of what he meant by moving like SEAL Team Six?" Paul was asked next.
"Just being militant," he answered. "Get things done without him asking. Nothing taken by surprise."
Paul summed up his personal assistant "mission" this way: "Just make sure he's always happy."
Combs would fire assistants on the spot for minor transgressions. Paul testified he was axed in November 2023 because "I forgot his Lululemon fanny pack when he wanted to go on a walk."
Combs was a forgiving SEAL team commander, though — or at least a forgetful one.
Paul said that after the Lululemon mishap, he just kept returning to work. "I saw him again," some days later, Paul told the jury, "and he was like, 'Oh hey.'"
Testimony continues Monday, when the government is expected to rest its case. Lead Combs attorney Marc Agnifilo told the judge Friday that the current plan is to rest the defense case after only one or two days of testimony, in which case closing arguments could begin on Thursday.
"If there's any shifting in that, I'll let everyone know immediately," the lawyer told US District Judge Arun Subramanian and prosecutors.
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