Help! Is there any way to recover audio affected by sample rate mismatch issue?

[csf54]

I've spent hours searching and have not been able to find any comparable situations. I'm hoping someone with more experience and knowledge about sample rates and A/D conversion can advise on whether my assessment has any merit, and if there is any recourse.

Setup:
I was recording mic'd audio through a 1st generation Scarlett Focusrite 18i20 interface, into an M2 Mac running Ableton 11. The sample rate in Ableton and Scarlett Mix Control and the Audio Midi Setup setting for the interface were all set to 48khz. Everything recorded fine and playback (via the interface) sounded correct. I listened through all my takes to comp tracks with no issue.

Issue:
When I returned to these sessions later that night, ALL tracks were noticeable pitched up (~one half step) in ALL three .als projects.

What I tried so far (with no luck):
- Listening through the Mac directly and via the interface.
- Turning off warp settings.
- Adjusting the sample rate in Ableton to 44.1khz, exiting, reopening, and playing back at 44.1khz (no change).
- Loading the recorded samples into a new project set at 44.1khz.
- Playing the recorded samples in Apple Music (same pitch issues exist there as well).

My diagnosis:
Based on the increment of the pitch shift, my research leads me to believe this is an issue with 44.1khz / 48khz sample rate mismatch, despite all settings being on 48khz. I have reason to believe this is a hardware malfunction with the interface. It is pretty old. I've been having issues with it performing inconsistently (with latency, and with extreme humming / buzz using phantom power), but these issues had seemingly resolved before I used it for these sessions.

Therefore, my only explanation is that somehow the interface was recording the audio at 44.1khz, despite it being set to 48khz and writing the audio files as 48khz. Then somehow once the live set was saved and switched from Ableton's Temporary Files to reference the files in the Samples --> Recorded folder, it caused the pitch change.

My questions:
1) Is it even possible for a hardware malfunction to cause audio to record at 44.1khz, despite indicating to the computer/DAW it was recording at 48khz?
2) If so, could this explain the above behavior? If not, any other ideas?
3) Is there any possible way to edit the audio files so that they play at the correct pitch?

If you've read this far, thank you and I appreciate any insight you may have. Even if these recordings are a loss, I'd like to understand what's going on so I can correct this in the future.

[resident_m]

1) Yes, that would be "just one little glitch", reporting a sample rate of 48 kHz and still recording at 44.1 kHz
2) Yes, if I did my math correctly, playing 44.1 kHz samples at 48 kHz should pitch up the audio by 146.7 cents - or 1.467 half steps.
3) Yes, I would try to use Audacity to export your files as RAW data, then when you import them back, it will ask you wich audio format the data are - just tell it they are 44.1 kHz 16 (or 24?) bit stereo, then save as WAV files, done. There might even be an option to directly change the sample rate of the files.