An activist coalition has dramatically scaled back plans to block the flow of traffic into the nation’s capital on Friday, a key organizer says following the release of undercover videos produced by a conservative group.

Legba Carrefour, an organizer of the activist network DisruptJ20 shown discussing bridge and train blockades in footage released by Project Veritas on Tuesday, says “the amount of chaos is being intentionally overstated” by his group.

“By virtue of us making those claims, it whips people up into the kind of panic that accidentally ends up causing the chaos we want. You can say ‘all of Metro is being blockaded’ and people will stay home,” the local anarchist says.

Carrefour, who has for weeks shared with reporters grandiose visions of a traffic-blocking "clusterf--k," tells U.S. News the current plan is to block just one bridge on Friday morning.

He asked that the particular roadway not be identified.

Project Veritas, led by undercover-video activist James O’Keefe, released two videos targeting the group. The first, released on Monday, showed two men affiliated with DisruptJ20 discussing a stink-bomb conspiracy targeting an inaugural ball.

The stink-bomb video quickly attracted about 1 million YouTube views, and DisruptJ20 released a statement saying the Veritas team had been identified by activists and fooled the infiltrators in reporting false information.

After the release of the second video, Carrefour said the blockade planning it featured has been scaled back in response to recently identified official road closings.

Watch the Second Project Veritas Video:



“The reason a lot of our plans are pared down is that stuff we wanted to blockade is already being shut down,” Carrefour says. “This is definitely a different beast in the amount of the city that is being shut down.”

Carrefour says he feels the group “absolutely” can claim credit for the number of official street closures.

DisruptJ20 is the more radical of two major organized efforts aimed at denouncing President-elect Donald Trump when he takes office. The other, led by the ANSWER Coalition, will feature a major rally along the inaugural parade route.

The most ambitious effort by DisruptJ20 emphasized by Carrefour on Tuesday is an effort to block – or at least slow significantly – pedestrians seeking to reach security checkpoints along the parade route.

Each checkpoint will be manned by a separate semi-autonomous group, Carrefour says. He acknowledges it’s not possible to permanently halt foot traffic.

Protest plans generally are overambitious and it's unclear how many people will show up. Although large spontaneous protests occurred in many cities following Trump's surprise win in November, rallies at the 2016 Republican convention attracted few activists.

Carrefour says he doesn't think DisruptJ20 will keep anti-Trump activists from being a large presence along the parade route. And he says he isn't concerned about the release of videos featuring his plans.

“They have nothing on me that I would not feel comfortable talking about in front of the police. Don’t care,” he says.