House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa announced Friday that he subpoenaed Secretary of State John Kerry to testify about the attack in Benghazi that occurred on Sept. 11, 2012. 

Kerry is ordered to testify before the House Oversight Committee on May 21, according to MSNBC. 

"The State Department's response to the congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack has shown a disturbing disregard for the Department's legal obligations to Congress," Issa wrote in a letter to Kerry that accompanied the subpoena. "Compliance with a subpoena for documents is not a game. Because your Department is failing to meet its legal obligations, I am issuing a new subpoena to compel you to appear before the Committee to answer questions about your agency's response to the congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack."

On Thursday, the House Committee had a hearing focused on the Benghazi attack. During the hearing, Issa criticized the Obama administration over documents that were recently released that detail how White House advisor Ben Rhodes told then-U.N. ambassador Susan Rice to discuss the attack during her appearances on Sunday morning talk shows. Issa accused the administration of violating "any reasonable transparency or historic precedent at least since Richard Milhous Nixon."

Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, who is on the committee, condemned the subpoena. 

"These actions are not a responsible approach to congressional oversight, they continue a trend of generating unnecessary conflict for the sake of publicity, and they are shockingly disrespectful to the Secretary of State," Cummings said.

Cummings' office criticized Issa for "accusing [Kerry] of a crime." His office also said that Brig. Gen. Robert Lovell, who testified during Thursday's hearing that the State Department did not ask military forces to intervene during the attack, was an unreliable witness. 

House Republicans also recently announced that they will form a special committee to investigate the attack, which killed four Americans. The committee will be led by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.). 

Gowdy said that Rice's comments following the attack were "fabulously wrong." He said during an appearance on Fox News in February that Rice was also "stunningly arrogant in her refusal to express any regret for lying to our fellow citizens."

House Speaker John Boehner announced the committee Friday. 

"The administration's withholding of documents -- emails showing greater White House involvement in misleading the American people -- is a flagrant violation of trust and undermines the basic principles of oversight upon which our system of government is built," he said in the statement. "And it forces us to ask the question, what else about Benghazi is the Obama administration still hiding from the American people?"

"This dismissiveness and evasion requires us to elevate the investigation to a new level," he continued in his statement.