After shocking testimony on January 6, a panel calls the Trump White House counsel

Key Takeaways:

• The U.S. House committee investigating the attack on January 6 slapped a subpoena on former White House attorney Pat Cipollone on Wednesday.

The former White House attorney Pat Cipollone was served with a subpoena on Wednesday by the U.S. House committee looking into the attack on January 6. Cipollone allegedly warned former president Donald Trump vehemently against his attempts to overturn his election defeat.

It's the first official action the committee has taken following Cassidy Hutchinson's public testimony. This former junior aide claimed Trump knew his supporters were armed on January 6 and demanded to be escorted to the U.S. Capitol on that day.

During his time as Trump's senior White House attorney, Cipollone is reported to have expressed worries about the former president's attempts to reverse his loss in the 2020 election and even made a resignation threat at one point. 

The committee claimed he might know several attempts by Trump friends to rig the Electoral College, including assembling alternate electors in states Biden won and trying to select an ally who promoted phony ideas of voter fraud as attorney general.

Hutchinson and former Justice Department attorneys who showed up for a hearing the previous week placed Cipollone in crucial circumstances following the election.

Before January 6, according to Hutchinson, Cipollone issued a warning, stating that there would be "severe legal difficulties" if Trump visited the Capitol while the scheduled protesters' event was in progress.

The morning of January 6, she testified, Cipollone reiterated his worries that "we're going to get prosecuted with every felony imaginable" if Trump did travel to the Capitol to try to interfere with the certification of the election.

She also claims to have overheard Meadows telling Cipollone that Trump was sympathetic to rioters who wanted to hang then-Vice President Mike Pence as the uprising progressed.

In her recall, Meadows informed Cipollone, "You heard it." He believes Mike merits it. He doesn't notice anything wrong with what they're doing.

While Cipollone had given the committee an "informal interview" on April 13, the chairman and vice-chairman of the committee, Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., stated in their letter to Cipollone that his refusal to provide on-the-record testimony formed their subpoena necessary.

The committee's chairman, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., stated last week that Cipollone testified to the group that he attempted to step in when he learned that Trump was receiving advice from Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who sought to promote bogus allegations of voter fraud. Recently, federal officials searched Clark's Virginia home and took his cell phone.

Although it was never issued, Clark had written a letter for important swing states that would have falsely stated the department had found alarming abnormalities in the election. One witness cited Cipollone saying to Trump that the letter was a "murder-suicide pact."