ambassador volker testified the 55 day pause on security assistance did not strike him as uncommon and at the pause was not significant. dr. hill and state department official catherine croft both testified that security assistance to ukraine specifically had been temporarily paused in the past. in fact, ambassador david hale, the under secretary of state for affairs, the third most senior person at the senior department testified that national security council had released a review across the world to make sure taxpayer dollars were spent to the national interest kind to advance the principle of burden sharing by our allies. dr. hill testified that as she was leaving in july, there had been a directive for full-scale review of our foreign policy assistance. she said there had been more scrutiny on security assistance as a result. another important data point is president trump's willingness to take a stronger stance and